Oh, Monsters Are Scared. That's Why They're

Yes. We Both Have A Bad Feeling. Tonight We Shall Take Our Bad Feelings And Share Them, And Face Them. We Shall Mourn. We Shall Drain The Bitter Dregs Of Mortality. Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled, But Halved. No Man Is An Island.

You Hurt. It's Okay. I Hurt Too. Hold My Hand.

It Occurs To Me That The Peculiarity Of Most Things We Think Of As Fragile Is How Tough They Truly Are. There Were Tricks We Did With Eggs, As Children, To Show How They Were, In Reality, Tiny Load-bearing Marble Halls; While The Beat Of The Wings Of A Butterfly In The Right Place, We Are Told, Can Create A Hurricane Across An Ocean. Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

The Best Thing About Writing Fiction Is That Moment Where The Story Catches Fire And Comes To Life On The Page, And Suddenly It All Makes Sense And You Know What It's About And Why You're Doing It And What These People Are Saying And Doing, And You Get To Feel Like Both The Creator And The Audience. Everything Is Suddenly Both Obvious And Surprising ("but Of Course That's Why He Was Doing That, And That Means That...") And It's Magic And Wonderful And Strange.

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Tends To Be Really Good At Making Outlines And Sticking To Them. I'm Very Good At Doing That, But I Don't Like It. It Sort Of Takes A Lot Of The Fun Out.