Steven Snell has a master’s degree in urban design. He's a professional city planner. In his writing he tells stories about cities and people, or perhaps people and their cities. He's a watcher, a thinker, a feeler, a writer... I watch; I think; I feel; I write. Then I change every word. Strike it all. Hate it all. Hate myself. Hate writing. Wish I was smarter, more creative, a better person. I go for a walk, watch a movie, think about moving to Maui, Madrid, Mexico City. I listen to Sigur Ros or Radiohead or The National or Damien Rice or Red House Painters. I read other novelists, award winners, dejected idiots; I read an adventure story, a love story. I read something about real life: a history of the world; European imperialism through ecological domination; the global arms race. I watch Peter Mansbridge on CBC. I listen to the stories being told; I watch them. I think about these and feel them and like how I feel and think about how I feel and feel more and then I scratch a note down, a random thought, or just a word, arrows to connect disparate thoughts, and then I connect them to form a sentence, a paragraph, a story, a novel, a best-seller, a Booker award winner, a Pulitzer and then I hate every.single.word again. Repeat.