[Alone with All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction by David Jauss] is now a gift to you. It is the gift of a man who is beloved by his students, beloved by his colleagues, and beloved by his readers. You will find in these pages, whether he is writing about such practical matters as point of view or such seemingly esoteric issues as Janusian thinking, a teacher who cares deeply about his students and a writer who cares just as deeply about the power of words and all they can mean. His is a fierce kind of caring—he takes this vocation seriously—and yet it is also a nurturing kind, as you will soon see.

The best way I know to discover how words do their work, and to understand how they can become art, is for the apprentice to study with a fierce and compassionate master of that art. David Jauss is just such a master, and this book grants its readers—you who desire to know what it means to write—an invaluable course of study, all at the hands of this extraordinary teacher, writer, and human. —Bret Lott, excerpt from the “Foreword”