When You Can See The Beauty Of

In An Ideal World, We Would Have Been Orphans. We Felt Like Orphans And We Felt Deserving Of The Pity That Orphans Get, But Embarrassingly Enough, We Had Parents.

I Really Did Not Feel Okay About Any Of This, And There Was Really Nothing I Could Do About Any Of It.

When I Was Very Little, I Probably Wanted To Be More Normal. I Probably Wanted The Laura Ashley Bedroom, And Instead I Got Thrift-store Everything.

I Was A Lot Dumber When I Was Writing The Novel. I Felt Like Worse Of A Writer Because I Wrote Many Of The Short Stories In One Sitting Or Over Maybe Three Days, And They Didn't Change That Much. There Weren't Many, Many Drafts. That Made Me Feel Semi-brilliant And Part Of A Magical Process. Writing The Novel Wasn't Like That. I Would Come Home Every Day From My Office And Say, "well, I Still Really Like The Story, I Just Wish It Was Better Written." At That Point, I Didn't Realize I Was Writing A First Draft. And The First Draft Was The Hardest Part.

The Things Keeping You Back-these Embarrassing, Boring, Stupid Obstacles-are The Heart Of What It Is To Be Human. They’re The Whole Reason For Making And Needing Art. So You Might As Well Go Ahead And Begin In Whatever Way You Can Right Now.