A Novelist's Bulls**t Dectector

I do think that all of us have this little bell built into our brains, a bulls**t detector that rings when things are false or wrong, and I think all of us know to respect that. No matter how faint it is, we hear it ringing and we keep working until the damn thing stops. One of the things some of us notice with younger writers in workshops is that they think maybe the bell is wrong. They think they can bring their story into class and everyone else will say, "Don't worry about the bell, it's wrong." But the bell is never wrong. (Peter Carey)