First of all, it wasn’t even that hard. The way they went on, all those writers, so incessantly, so dramatically, they might have been going down the mines on all fours with a plastic spoon clenched between their teeth to loosen the diamonds, or wading in raw sewage to find the leak in the septic line, or running into burning buildings with forty-five pounds of equipment on their backs. But this degree of whining over the mere act of sitting down at a desk, or even reclining on a sofa, and … typing?

Not so hard. Not hard at all, actually.

Of course, she’d had a ringside seat for the writing of her late husband’s final novel, composed—or at least completed—during the months of their all-too-brief marriage. She’d also had the master-class-for-one of his previous novel, the wildly successful Crib. True, the actual writing of that novel had predated their meeting, but she’d still come away from it with a highly nuanced understanding of how that extraordinary book had been made, its specific synthesis of fiction (his) and fact (her own). So that helped.

Another thing that helped? It was a truth universally acknowledged that finding an agent and then a publisher were hoops of fire that anyone else who wrote a novel had to face, but she, herself, was to be exempt from that particular ordeal. She, because of who she already was—the executor of her late husband’s estate, with sole control of his wildly valuable literary properties—would never need to supplicate herself at the altar of the Literary Market Place! She could simply step through those hoops, to effective, prestigious representation and the Rolls-Royce of publishing experiences, thanks to Matilda (her late husband’s agent) and Wendy (his editor), two women who happened to be at the apex of their respective professions. (She knew this not just from her own impressions but empirically; a certain disgruntled writer had taken revenge on the publishing monde by ranking every editor and agent from apex to nadir on his website—and making public their email addresses!—and even people who thought him otherwise demented admitted that his judgment, in these matters, was accurate). Having Matilda and Wendy was an incalculable advantage; the two women knew everything there was to know about books, not only how to make them better but how to make them sell, and she, personally, had zero interest in writing a novel if it wasn’t going to sell like that other novel, the one nominally written by her late husband, Jake Bonner. (Though with certain unacknowledged assistance.)

Initially, she’d had no more intention of writing a novel than she had, say, of starting a fashion line or a career as a DJ. She did read books, of course. She always had. But she read them in the same way she shopped for groceries, with the same practicalities and (until recently!) eye on the budget. For years she had read three or four books a week for her job producing the local radio show of a Seattle misogynist, dutifully making notes and pulling the most sensational quotes, preparing Randy, her boss, to sound like he’d done the bare minimum to prepare for his interviews: political memoirs, sports memoirs, celebrity memoirs, true crime, local-chef cookbooks, and yes, the rare novel, but only if there was some kind of a TV tie-in or a Seattle connection. Hers had been a constant enforced diet of reading, digesting, and selectively regurgitating the relentless buffet of books Randy had no intention of reading himself.

Jacob Finch Bonner had been the author of one of those rare novels, passing through Seattle with his gargantuan bestseller, the aptly named Crib, to appear at the city’s most prestigious literary series. She had lobbied hard to have him on the show, and she had prepared Randy as carefully as ever for their interview—not that it mattered, Randy being Randy—or perhaps even more carefully. She’d left the radio station and the West Coast a couple of months later, to ascend to the role of literary spouse and widow.

Matilda and Wendy weren’t just gatekeepers to the kind of success writers everywhere fantasized about; they were capable of actually transforming a person’s writing into a better version of itself, which was a real skill, she acknowledged, and something she personally respected. But it had nothing to do with her. She, herself, had never aspired to write so much as a Hallmark card. She, herself, had no intention of ever following Jake down that garden path of literary seduction, with its faint whispers of acclaim. She lacked, thank goodness, any wish for the kind of slavish worship people like her late husband had so obviously craved, and which he had managed, finally, to attract. Those were the people clutching his book as they approached Jake at the signing table after his events with a quaver in their voices, declaring: “You’re … my … favorite … novelist …” She couldn’t even think of a novelist she would travel across town to listen to. She couldn’t think of a novelist whose next work she was actively waiting for, or whose novel she even cared enough about to keep forever, or whose signature she wanted in her copy of their novel.

Well, possibly Marilynne Robinson’s in a copy of Housekeeping. But only as a private joke with herself.

Even deeply ungifted novelists had to have a vocation, she supposed. They had to believe they’d be good enough at writing to even try writing, didn’t they? Because it wasn’t the kind of thing you did on a whim, like making the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips or putting a streak of color in your hair. She was the first to say that she lacked that vocation. She might even admit that she had never had a vocation of any kind, since the only thing she had consistently longed for, since childhood, was to simply be left alone, and she was only now, on the cusp of forty (give or take) and cushioned by her late husband’s literary estate, within striking distance of doing just that. At last.

Frankly she’d never have done the thing at all if not for something she had said without thinking, in an interview for that very same literary series in Seattle, her adoptive hometown, when a pushy bitch named Candy asked, in front of a thousand or so people, what she was thinking of doing next.

Next as in: once you are finished with this public mourning of your husband.

Next as in: once you’ve returned to your own essential pursuit of happiness.

And she had heard herself say that she was thinking about writing a novel of her own.

Immediate approbation. Thunderous applause, with a chorus of You go, girl! and I love it! There was nothing wrong with that, and she didn’t hate it, so—not unreasonably—she’d made a habit of reprising the statement in subsequent interviews as she traveled around the country and abroad, representing her no longer available husband and in support of his final novel.

“What are your own plans?” said a professionally sympathetic book blogger at the Miami Book Fair.

“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do next?” said an editorial director at Amazon.

“I know it’s hard to see beyond the grief you’re going through right now,” said a frozen-faced woman on morning TV in Cleveland, “but I also know we’re all wondering what’s next for you.”

Actually, I’m thinking about writing a novel …

Everywhere she went it was the same powerful icebreaker: wet eyes, vivid smiles, universal support. How brave she was, to turn her heartbreak into art! To set her own path, unafraid, up that same Parnassus her late husband had scaled! Good for her!

Well, she had nothing against free and free-flowing goodwill. It was much easier to be admired than to be reviled, so why not? And also it helped that no one ever once referenced an earlier mention of this great revelation. I hear you’re writing a novel! How is that coming along? When can we expect to see it? Not even: What’s it about?

Just as well, because it wasn’t about anything, and it wasn’t coming along at all, and they shouldn’t expect to see it ever … because it didn’t exist. There was, as Gertrude Stein had once so famously said, no there there, and yet the mere notion of this mythical novel had carried her out of a grueling and drawn-out year of literary appearances on waves of applause. And not—it was worth noting—applause for Jake and his tragic mental health struggles or rumored persecution (probably at the hands of some jealous failed writer!), and not applause for his sad posthumous novel, either. Applause for her.

It was not in her nature to...