Excerpt from Discipline by Larissa Pham, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When you write, do you have a plan? she asked. Or do you see it as an act of faith?

I wasn't sure how to answer.

I usually start with a plan, I said. A scenario I want to explore, some kind of relationship or tension I'm interested in, something that provokes the initial impulse. But once I begin writing, things start to change.

She nodded, waiting for me.

So I suppose you could say from that point on it's an act of faith, I said. I do have to have faith in the characters to tell me what to do, and I have to have faith in my own ability to tell a story. But it's possible I have a different idea of faith than you do.

Other students had remained seated as they spoke, but this student had chosen to stand. She wore her hair in two puffs high on either side of her head, and they bobbed gently as she nodded, listening.

I see, she said. Maybe it's not so different. In a way, you're trusting that the story inside you will come out in the way that it's intended. Right?

Well, I said. Sometimes I feel more like a conduit for it. At a point, it starts to take over, and I have to listen.

A beautiful expression moved across her face.

I've felt that way before, she said. Sometimes, I feel the story in my body. It begins somewhere in my heart and moves all the way down to my hands ...

She held one out now and flexed it, her painted nails flashing in the low light of the auditorium. And it builds and it builds, and—once, she said, gripping the mic with both hands now, once, I was at work, and a story came to me, nearly in its entirety. And I couldn't write it down—I had to let it build, this tremendous pressure, ratcheting up and up and up until my shift ended and on the train home I typed it all on my phone, my fingers flying, not looking up until it was finished.

She fell silent, waiting for me to respond. Someone in the audience shifted, as if to release the pressure she had invoked. A restlessness moved through the crowd. In the front row, I saw a woman shake out her hands and reach into her bag.

But it doesn't happen all the time, the student said. How do you—when that doesn't happen. How do you know when something is worth working on?

I remembered being her age. Earnest to a fault, so certain of art's power and possibility. I too had once believed I had special talent, that there existed something only I could make, and that I deserved to make it. The student's face shone with a lovely, milky opacity. I wanted her to keep believing this—that she was capable of great things. But I couldn't think of anything to say in the moment that wouldn't sound bald and false.

You don't, I said. You don't know whether something is worth continuing, not until you've started it. And sometimes even then you don't know. But you have to keep working at it, I said.

I was using a microphone too, one clipped to the collar of my shirt. My voice sounded tinny and unfamiliar, lagging slightly through the auditorium speakers, and for a moment, I wasn't sure if it was actually me speaking. It seemed like the voice of someone else.

When you were writing this book, the student said, how did you know?

I didn't, I said. But I had to write it.

How many times had I thought this, said it to myself and others. I had to write it. There was no alternative, no world in which I hadn't.

After the event there was a short reception, and by the time things were winding down it was around three in the afternoon. I had been awake since the very early morning. As part of the speaking invitation the university had booked me a room in a hotel downtown; though perhaps it was too much effort for one day, I'd intended to visit a museum, too. But there was still the matter of my missing suitcase, and I lingered at the entrance to the university building, considering what to do next. In an alcove, next to benches where I supposed students gathered between classes, there was an array of flyers and postcards—advertisements for talks and cultural events. I sat on a bench and flipped through a stack of flyers, phone in hand. A well-known poet was giving a talk in two weeks; looking at the dates, I had just missed the An-My Lê show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Then I saw on one postcard a painting I knew. Or rather, I knew the painter.

Excerpted from Discipline by Larissa Pham. Copyright © 2026 by Larissa Pham. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.