The Beveler — BEN JAHN

I wrote this story, out now in Issue 31 of Tupelo Quarterly, in two weeks last July on a friend’s balcony (and at a few cafe tables, and maybe one sandy longhand session on a piece of driftwood on the beach) in San Pancho, Nayarit. For me, that’s fast. Something about the constant heat, the all-day construction sounds from across the street, the live music from the cerveceria downstairs giving way in the early morning to an hour of waves before the roosters got going—it all kept me in that sweet fictive flow state. I didn’t want to go anywhere without my notebook. I didn’t want to swim too far out in case I had a phrase change for the last sentence or an image for the next one.