A few words about Frank. Frank is a bunny — a metal bunny whose ears, bent slightly forward, create a coat hook. Frank recently made more than $23,000 on Kickstarter. Is it cute? Sort-of, if you have little kids. Useful? It depends.

Four years ago, I began writing a book.* I had something close to a first draft when I took it to a writer’s group. That first day, one of the members arrived late; she looked as if she had just been spit out of a terrible tornado and plopped, disheveled and wide-eyed, into a corn field. The cause of her distress? She had just published her first book.