“There’s a great scene in the Raymond Carver story ‘Call If You Need Me’ (not to be confused with the better-known ‘Where I’m Calling From’). The story reaches a lull, and suddenly Carver brings some horses into the story. I liked that idea of bringing animals into a story when nothing else is happening, and I still tend to do that when I get stuck. My first collection,The Heaven of Animals, is full of stories with animals wandering into them. That’s probably how the deer wound up in this draft.”