When I was 19 I wrote a novel called “A Peculiar Betrayal.”  I feverishly typed it out between watches on ship, scribbled its chapters in notepads on buses and trains; I filled it with all the angst and spelling mistakes I could muster.  Of the handful of literary agents I dared sent it to, two were kind enough to send back personal notes[i] alongside their standard rejection letters.  Both were surprisingly encouraging, but both said the same thing:  show, don’t tell.  This article is my attempt, almost twenty years later, to understand what that means. (more…)