The novel had forty-seven drafts saved in a folder called NOVEL_FINAL with a number appended. NOVEL_FINAL_47 was the most recent. Claire had spent nine years producing these drafts and she was not sure she was closer than she had been at NOVEL_FINAL_12, which was around the time she had last believed she was making progress. She opened NOVEL_FINAL_1, which she had not read in eight years. It was rougher than she remembered and also more alive than NOVEL_FINAL_47 in a way she could not precisely name. The sentences were worse. The structure was wrong. The main character made a decision in chapter two that Claire had removed from all subsequent drafts because it was impulsive and did not seem to belong to the person she was trying to write. Reading it now, the decision seemed entirely true. She did not immediately rewrite the novel. She went for a walk and thought about what it meant that the most honest version of a thing was the first attempt, before she had learned enough to improve it. She came back and opened NOVEL_FINAL_48 and restored the chapter two decision. She did not know if this was progress. She numbered it forty-eight anyway.