Bird By Bird, Buddy. Just Take It

Slowly, After Dozens Of Rejection Slips And Failures And False Starts And Postponed Dreams - What Langston Hughes Called Dreams Deferred - I Stepped Onto The Hallowed Ground Of Being A Published Novelist, And Then 15 Years Later, I Even Started To Make Real Money.

Mine Was A Patchwork God, Sewn Together From Bits Of Rag And Ribbon, Eastern And Western, Pagan And Hebrew, Everything But The Kitchen Sink And Jesus.

Everyone Is Screwed Up, Broken, Clingy, And Scared, Even The People Who Seem To Have It More Or Less Together.

A Good Marriage Is Where Both People Feel Like They're Getting The Better End Of The Deal.

Writing Can Be A Pretty Desperate Endeavor, Because It Is About Some Of Our Deepest Needs: Our Need To Be Visible, To Be Heard, Our Need To Make Sense Of Our Lives, To Wake Up And Grow And Belong. It Is No Wonder If We Sometimes Tend To Take Ourselves Perhaps A Bit Too Seriously.