Here’s something that resonated strongly with me: Issendai on sick systems. Been there and done that, in retail and in relationships. I think I’ve achieved enough in the way of age and self-knowledge that I’m a little less likely to buy into it anymore. Of course, saying that is just an invitation for the Universe to whomp one upside the head. *braces self, eyes the sky suspiciously* But seriously…knowing it and naming it is a prerequisite for not falling for it. I’ve had enough of being exhausted and living with crazymaking people. I’d rather strike out on my own.

The first day of summer vacation is proceeding apace, with videogames, bicycle riding, and much relaxation for the wee ones. I remember those first few glorious days of freedom, when the entire summer stretched out in front of you, terra incognita and delicious. It does me good to see them enjoying themselves while I’m tapping at the keyboard. I don’t wish for a comparable vacation–I’d write all through it anyway. But I can live vicariously.

Climbing this morning was awesome. I tried a 5.8 I’d never tried before, and I’m starting to think with my body on the rock wall. I can’t explain it any better than that–it’s the point where your body learns what’s going on and suddenly starts moving without thought, a sort of trained instinct. It’s damn beautiful to feel. I love the solitary nature of rock climbing–even with a belayer, it’s just you and the rock face. You can’t measure yourself by anything other than yourself. For someone who hates team sports, this is as close as I’ll get to them. It helps that my regular climbing partner is incredibly supportive, and we’ve worked together enough by now that I know without a doubt exactly what she’s thinking when she’s on the wall, and vice versa. There’s something to be said for feeling the belay line tighten and knowing that your belayer has seen you’re getting tired and needing a reminder that the rope will catch you. There’s also something really nice about reaching the top of a difficult climb and hearing everyone around you cheering you on and appreciating the nature of what you’ve accomplished.

Like I said, I’m not much into team sports. But I’ll take it.

I’ve reached the last difficult point in Dru 5. It’s the point of the book where nothing seems to be working right, you’re running out of room, and the entire thing feels like crap. The only cure for it is pushing through and trusting the work to catch you, like that belay rope. Leaning back a little, looking at the holds in front of you, and knowing that it may not look like it, but you can reach the next one. You just have to go for it. If there’s one thing writing has taught me, one lesson I keep learning over and over, it’s that I can reach higher than I ever thought I could. Just going for it works out an amazing amount of the time. I suspect the Universe is built that way.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. Two speeds. One I use way more than the other.
2. A Milestone
3. My Excitement, It Is…Not So Exciting

This is going to be a post tangentially about my weight…so if you’re tired of hearing me talk about that, you’re probably better off stopping now. On the other hand, I will be tying it into writing, so it’s up to you.

I’ve (drumroll please) achieved the weight goal I set for myself lo these many months ago. (All the way back on Labor Day of 2008, I believe it was. Slow and steady…) I’ve lost between 70-80 pounds and overshot my goal of a size 14 by, let’s see, three or four sizes. Some of that was stress-related, yes. It’s been a stressful year or two. But most of it was acquiring healthier habits– watching what I ate and making exercise more of a priority. I found out halfway through that when I wasn’t miserable over crazymaking people, I didn’t want to eat to dull the misery. That revelation was accompanied by the fact that the steady work I’d been doing before then making exercise a priority actually started to pay off. Once I started seeing results, the whole world opened up, so to speak.

I’m choosing to be very proud of myself. It’s been a long, long road, but I’m glad I started, and I’m glad for everyone who supported me along the way, from my writing partner to my kids to my hairdresser friend C.

I’ve always been a big advocate of taking a brisk walk or blocking out a fight scene to shake things loose inside a story. Physical movement works very, very well for me when it comes to my creative process. The trouble was, for a very long time I hated working out–long, long story having to do with my aversion to anything resembling a team sport. I like to work alone, thank you. Now that I’ve arranged my life so that I can run on the treadmill every weekday morning, ALONE (I’m up to just over three miles again, every day), that time is some of the most productive I’ve ever had.

I’m not saying you have to run three miles or lose a good third of your bodyweight (ha ha) to have a sustainable creative career. I am saying that when you’re stuck working on a story, getting up and moving around for ten or fifteen minutes often unsticks the damn thing and gets the Muse off her couch and away from those damn bonbons. (Not so incidentally, this is another use for your trusty kitchen timer. Set it and move, and when you’re done, voila!)

We live a lot in our heads, we writers, and we tend to forget there’s a whole body carrying said head around. Getting up and getting the blood moving gives the Muse a fresh start on things. Never underestimate the power of ten jumping jacks, ten minutes shaking your booty to loud music, or a brisk ten-minute walk when characters aren’t behaving and the cursor starts blinking at you like Sauron’s Eye.

Just this morning I was brooding over a plot point, and fifteen minutes into my run–at about the first mile-mark–all of sudden the next third of the book opened up, complete with scenes and settings. It’s magic when it happens, and I spent the other two miles playing with it inside my head, fine-tuning. It was awesome. Of course, the cardio benefits aren’t bad either.

You don’t have to run flat-out. Another particular favorite of mine is putting on some music and dancing, awkwardly I’m sure, in my living room. Usually it’s a song from the “soundtrack” of the current book in progress, and it reliably shakes everything loose. I wouldn’t dance like a dork if it didn’t actually work 90% of the time.

Well, yeah, maybe I would. I’m funny that way. But I’m glad it works.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. If I Could Do That, I Can Do This
2. The Five-Minute Trick
3. Let Me Just Fix That For You…

I hate driving in Portland. It’s really not Portland’s fault, even though I swear to God the streets change, especially at night. No, most of my stress comes from the fact that I rarely have access to a reliable car, so on top of the navigational stress (which I handle with the GPS that came with my cell phone, thank you God) there’s also the will-my-vehicle-blow-up-on-me stress.

Today, however, I had a reliable car (thanks to Subaru Shawn, who rocks) and the GPS, and plenty of time. So I made it out to the Cedar Hills Crossing Powell’s–remember, I’m going to be there on May 25th, signing with Ilona Andrews and Devon Monk–and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on the whole day, I navigated successfully to Deek & Bryan’s Next Adventure for climbing gear.

It was worth trying to find parking around Grand Avenue in the middle of the day, because the staff are so helpful and nice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone having a bad experience there. Once I found the climbing section and actually opened my mouth to ask questions (sports supply stores always make me feel lazy and underachieving and shy) I got the help of a very nice young man who took me patiently through buying my first pair of climbing shoes and my very first harness. (My one moment of caviling? “No flowers on the harness, please. Just…no flowers. I’m not a flower type of girl. Unless it’s a flesh-eating monster flower…oh my God, did I just say that out loud?”) I didn’t catch the young man’s name, but his mother must be very proud of him.

Now I’m home and I’ve bolted lunch and I have to get dear, sweet, stubborn Dru in more trouble. I feel refreshed and renewed, instead of wrung-out and panicked. Which is a big change. A reliable vehicle does indeed make all the difference. I know, it sounds boring and pedestrian. But little by little I’m doing things I’ve never done before, and my life is getting so much better. The process of breaking out of the chrysalis proceeds apace, and it’s nice out here. It’s like all the work of the past year, and especially all the very intense work of the last six months, has suddenly started to pay off. Where before it was just a slog, now I’m seeing actual results.

I like that. I’ll keep it.

And now for chaos, panic, and vampire attacks. Catch you later, gator.

Related posts:

1. Resistance Is Futile
2. Reaching Higher
3. Two speeds. One I use way more than the other.

The weekend was busy. Fortunately, a huge personal disappointment isn’t throwing me into the slough of despond; I think I’ve reached the point where I’m actively expecting to be treated well. And when that doesn’t happen, I’m cutting my losses sooner. I used to think that if you just loved someone hard enough, everything else would work out. Now I’m slowly learning that loving someone does not have to mean sacrificing every last bit of myself only to have them disdain me in the end for being too easy.

So. This weekend there was much glee, because the couch arrived. I didn’t get a couch before now because, well, there was a lot of cleaning-up I had to do after people and seriously, I did not have time to even THINK of cleaning a couch. Now that the living space has calmed down immensely and I’m picking up after just two reasonable children instead of several over-18 children (oh, don’t even get me started on man-boys!) I felt like I could have something nice. So…I got something nice. And I spent a half-hour with a ratchet putting the sofa arms on.

It was the first time in my life I had actually used a ratchet. I felt quite, quite manly.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, but I didn’t mow the lawn. I probably should have, but it was my friend Monk’s birthday. So there was a new recipe tried for dinner, much laughing and talking, and a generally great time was had by all. Plus, Monk got to crash on the new sofa instead of the laundry pile or the air mattress I used to drag out for him to sleep on.

Sometimes it is just the little things.

The most helpful part of the weekend was reading Jennifer Crusie’s most awesome essay on protecting the work. I realized that I’ve let a lot of Life Stuff impinge on my working in the last six months. Granted, they’re the sort of life stressors, both positive and negative, that can really throw anyone for a loop. But now it’s time to buckle down and really remind myself that people who don’t value me are people I can do without, and people I don’t need to drain myself to take care of.

This is a huge realization for me. I’ve spent a lot of my life taking care of people, and it’s liberating to narrow the field to the people who I WANT to take care of instead of anyone in perceived pain I wander across. Healthier? Yes. Sometimes exhausting because I feel the pull of old bad habits? Oh, hell yes.

Which is why I think I might print out Ms. Crusie’s excellent essay and read it every day for a while. If I have to be a cranky old woman to protect my work…

…well then, I guess I’ll have to buy a cane.

See you tomorrow, dear Readers.

Related posts:

1. Oh, Monday.
2. Lots of Cleaning And Sleeping…
3. Life and Art

Thankfully I don’t have to visit the dentist for a while now. I mean, they’re nice people, and the nitrous is okay, but the less time I spend there the better.

I had an extraordinarily productive weekend, between tax filing, mowing the lawn (always my favorite chore, NOT) and cleaning gutters. You’d think gutters would be right up my alley. Alas, no. I loathe cleaning them. Except I put together plot architecture, mumbling under my breath while I scooped out sludge and freed up stagnant water. If that book turns out soggy, I know who to blame.

So now it’s working on that short story and waiting for my mouth to feel like it belongs to me again, while I listen to Brahms and long for a cup of coffee.

Oh, Monday. In a few hours you’ll be gone, and we’ll both be happier that way.

Related posts:

1. Monday Weekend
2. Happy Monday!
3. Lots of Cleaning And Sleeping…

And now, for the Friday post.

Not everything in my life centres around writing. It just looks that way.

I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight lately. Part of that is stress, another part of it is exercising six days a week. Also, a couple weeks ago, I picked up a book about using cognitive therapy to help normalize your relationship with food and weight. Yes, it has the word “diet” in the title. I believe it’s a fact that DIET’s first three letters are a warning. But it’s equally true that I have a messed-up relationship with food. I know cognitive therapy works for me, so I’m willing to give it a go.

Several of the exercises in this book centre around “answering sabotaging thoughts”, especially when it comes to the “it’s not fair” portion of life’s program. Yes, it’s not fair that our bodies are built to store extra against famine, and it’s not fair that during times and societies of plenty we get obese and shorten our lifespans. It’s not fair that I can’t eat the way I want, be sedentary, and be as physically fit as I want to. It’s not fair that I have to drag myself to the treadmill and that I have to write down the calorie counts of what I’m eating. It really, truly, is not fair.^[1]

But that is the way it is.

One of the strategies for answering these sabotaging thoughts–because that’s what they are, they’re little saboteurs–is an index card with the words NO CHOICE printed on it. Every day, when I read my reasons for putting myself through calorie restriction and exercise, the NO CHOICE card is also there, and I read it too. If I want to become as physically fit as the goal I’ve set for myself, I don’t have a choice.

Which brings me to writing. My Friday posts are about making a living writing for publication. To me, this involves the discipline of writing every day (something I’ve caught quite a bit of flak for saying) and acting professionally and reasonably even in the face of rejection and bad reviews. It involves putting up with shifting deadlines and making the effort each day, every day. Sure, I’d rather sit up in an ivory tower and be a Speshul Snowflake, but that won’t feed the kids OR get me invited back to be published again.

There are several times during the day when that little NO CHOICE card flashes through my mind. As Dr. Beck points out, there are rules in everyone’s life. You don’t struggle or agonize over brushing your teeth, do you? (At least, I don’t. And neither do my wee ones.) It’s just the way it is.

Here’s why this is valuable: if sitting down to write every day is a rule, you don’t struggle with it. You make time to do it because it’s a priority. You have no choice. Getting into the mindset that this is important and you don’t have a choice about doing it increases your chances of getting published exponentially. Because you’re treating it seriously. If you can make time to catch that TV episode, you can make time to write every day. If you can make sure you have a latte every morning, you can make sure to write every day. Getting into the habit of considering daily writing a fait accompli is your first step.

Once you have a good solid discipline of writing every day, you can do what a lot of professionals do and take the occasional day off. Your busy little brain, in the habit of working through stories, will still be working all through your “day off”. Plus, once you have a good solid disciplined habit, it’s easier to get back into it after a holiday. But discipline is like a muscle, it must be used or it atrophies, and I have not met a single professional writer who doesn’t need to exercise that muscle and spend effort to start it back up again after a holiday.

Viewing this as a “no choice” thing frees up a lot of energy I would otherwise use bitching and moaning about it. It gives me a lot more energy to just concentrate on what I’m doing. It’s the same reason I find rollercoasters relaxing–from the moment I’m strapped in and the car jolts forward, I’m in the hands of the gods. I can’t do a single thing. It’s a submission to the inevitable, and it works for me.

So here’s my advice if you want to write for publication: get yourself an index card and write NO CHOICE on it in the biggest blackest letters you can. Read it twice a day, and really think about the things you make time for, the priorities you have. If writing is not on that list and you want it to be, do it. Just say “it’s not fair, oh well, I have no choice, I HAVE to write today.” Set your kitchen timer for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and go to.

You’d be amazed at how those two little words–both the “oh well” and the “NO CHOICE”–open up time where you thought you had none. It’s not fair, you’re right.

But that’s the way it is, and it’s the best advice I can offer.

Keep writing.

^[1]Somewhere David Bowie is snarling, “You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is.”

Related posts:

1. Three Qualities A Writer Needs
2. I Don’t Wanna
3. A Merry-Go-Round Full Of TNT

I also got a short story into first-draft form and sent it off before deadline, freeing me up for a little bit before I have to dive again. That’s one thing about drowning one’s sorrows in work–a whole lot of stuff gets done. Things are getting better. So better, in fact, that I’m not just keeping my head above the waves. I’m actually swimming, with destinations in mind.

This is a great change. I like it. I want it to continue.

The “good” thing about a complete emotional and spiritual breakdown is that it gives you the opportunity to try new things. Break out of a rut, so to speak. After January 1, I’m going to have a lot more free time during the day. So, I’ve been making lists of things I could do–other than working, which is going to remain the constant–to utilize that free time.

The list is by no means comprehensive. But here’s a bit of it:

* Take a photography class.
* Take a pottery class.
* Get into a Krav Maga class.
* Start taking ballet again.
* Take a foreign language (probably French, again, I did four years of it in my benighted youth) and brush up on my Latin.
* Take myself out for coffee and a half-hour of pleasure reading at least once a week.
* Knit in public.
* Volunteer. Haven’t figured out where yet, but there’s a bunch of options.

Out of all of those, the one that has the most chance of happening initially is taking a Krav Maga class. I’m interested, and it will help with combat scenes. Plus, if I have any lingering anger, that’s a great place to get it out.

Then I can sign up for photography, drawing, pottery over the next few years at the community college, just take it really slow. Once my weight becomes reasonable again, ballet is an option as well. I love ballet. I love the form, the gracefulness; I always loved how I knew what was going to happen in a ballet class. First the warmup, then the barre, then the slow floor work, then the fast floor work. It doesn’t change. I appreciate that.

I might even loosen up and take other dance–hip-hop sounds fun, and maybe some more bellydance.

I also want to take some auto-mechanic courses. Find out more about cars, meet some people, get some grease on my hands. Who knows? Woodworking might be cool too.

The point I’m aiming for is: I’m over the bad part of it, and my life is really starting to open up again. It’s a good feeling to be interested in things again. I’ve spent my life being interested in pretty much everything–the world is a fascinating place. I’ve never understood people who think the world is boring. There are little miracles and opportunities to ask why all over. Sometimes I retreat to lick my wounds, true, but I’m always aware that there’s a big fascinating world out there, and that it’s just waiting for me to come dance.

Right now I’m stretching a little bit, getting my muscles ready. But soon–in less than a month–I’ll be ready to tango with the big old world again.

It’ll be nice to be back out on the floor.

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1. Hand On Sword, Eye On Prize
2. Goodbye, 2009
3. Writer Turns Into Dry Sponge, Film At Eleven

So here I am with one book revised and out of the way, a short story boiling in the foreground (got to get to that before it boils over and spills something) and a ton of correspondence done. Where did the weekend go? Oh, yeah. I worked straight through it.

Great.

Still, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m supposed to be celebrating how far I’ve come over the next two weeks. Looking back I can see the changes, the peaks and valleys. There’s a long way yet to go, but for a while at least the hard part is behind me. At least I scraped along the bottom for a while, and now I can feel the lift gathering under my wings to help me back up.

I’m going to start my celebration with some leftover Indian food for lunch. And by putting on the two rings I just got. They are simple silver bands. On the inside of each is etched the simple words: I love you. They’re promise rings–and they’re a promise I’m making to myself. I am going to love myself. I need to be the first person I nominate for that job. I am tired of what Irene O’Garden so memorably called “the venom of the Bitch Within.” I deserve better.

So, dear Reader, this Thanksgiving week you can imagine me being grateful for how far I’ve come. Every person who’s ever been knocked down and wondered if they could ever get back up–you can. Here’s my hand. See the rings? Imagine the slight scratch of etched silver against your own skin, whispering I love you all day, every day. Let that be a gift you give yourself.

It’s a damn hard job. But if we don’t love ourselves, who will?

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. Split-Pea Monday
2. The Examined Life
3. Keep The Joy

But not all.

Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling a bit down, but then I got on the treadmill. Exercise helps. I did the shovelgloving. That helped too. And by degrees I arrived at a place where I’m feeling OK. Really OK, not just “make do with less pain than usual.” The feeling might not last–if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past couple months it’s that the waves can pour over you at a moment’s notice. (That’s why they call them feelings, I guess.) But it’s good while it’s here, and I can focus on extending it and knowing it will return. I’m struggling free of that place I retreated to, the safe place where I had to curl up and lick my wounds for a while. Pretty soon I’ll dry my wings off…but not yet. Right now I’ve just got part of me free, and I’m breathing some good air.

Part of the good feeling is making decisions about things to cut out of my life I am a curious mixture of contradictory things, and “doormat for the people I love” is one of them. I can’t afford to be a doormat anymore, love or no love. It’s too damaging. It sucks up all one’s time and energy and leaves nothing but an empty shell–especially if you love someone who takes without giving.

I’m worth more than that.

Still, I’m having to be careful what kind of music I listen to. Love songs still hurt. I’m sticking with instrumentals, breakup songs (the cheerier the better, but still used with caution) and flamenco. The love-song rule doesn’t count if they’re singing in a language I don’t understand very well, I can just listen to the phonemes.

Anyway, enough of that. I’m only checking into NaNo every few days, so my wordcount jumps are not at all how I’m getting the daily wordcount done. My brain is still dry and empty from finishing the zero draft of Heaven’s Spite. (It’s not pretty, but it’s done.) I’ve got revisions coming up, a short story to write, and cover blurbage to organize. Along with yoga to squeeze in today between all the errands.

No rest for the wicked. Really, I suspect the wicked prefer it that way. I know I certainly do.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. Getting Better
2. How Often Do I Get This Excited?
3. Touchup and Catch up

At my blog today I wrote about how deciding not to engage can save one’s life. Here, because I am feeling both introspective and ambitious, I want to talk about writing saving one’s life. Really, any art can save you, but writing’s what I know. So here goes.

I got my first intimation of the power of art while I was a teenager. I was dating a man seven years my senior, who had a taste for very young girls and using his fists on the same. Yes, I was stupid–but what fourteen-year-old isn’t? I had no means of measuring the threat this predator represented, and I had no other benchmark for affection other than abuse. As a matter of fact, the kid my own age I dated before that was so nice I got nervous and broke it off with him, because he didn’t hit me. It just didn’t feel right if someone wasn’t whaling on me.

So there I was, getting it from both ends, and I discovered alcohol. I’m sure I was drunk through most of my junior-high and high-school. I still pulled a respectable GPA–academics were, at that point, still a fun game for me and I have never lost my taste for learning. But I was desperate. There was literally nowhere I could turn. I had grown used to keeping secrets by then, and staying on top of this pile of things I couldn’t talk about was wearying, to say the least.

This was also the time I was reading (please don’t laugh) Uncanny X-Men. A LOT. Especially when Claremont was writing and Lee was drawing. The idea of being a mutant, with these fantastical powers and loneliness, was very appealing.

So I did what any redblooded junior writer would.

I started writing fanfic in spiral notebooks. Obsessively. I even cut back on the drinking so I had more time to write. It started out so innocently, a story about Wolverine and a mysterious assassin who seemed to heal just as fast as he did. Then there was the Colossus-Storm mix, because I thought Forge was a wimp and Ororo deserved someone nice. Then I started interjecting my own characters–Mary Sues and Gary Stus, to be sure, but they felt good at the time.

Things crept into my writing. Descriptions of punches I’d recorded in my diary, things I noticed about the world, snippets of conversation I’d heard. I cut back on the drinking even more to have more time to write. I wrote in the bathroom in the middle of the night, my heart in my mouth, sneaking out of my boyfriend’s parties to write on the porch, hiding my notebooks in my locker because my mother went through my diaries at home once or twice and administered a whuppin’ because of what she found.

The writing was always there. I could take almost anything because I was thinking, when I get by myself I’ll write about this. Fixing my attention on that was a disassociative trick to be sure, but it worked. It gave me a future to look forward to.

Eventually, the fanfic stories grew thin. I wanted other characters, I wanted other settings. I had this idea for a book…a fantasy book. And with my heart in my mouth, I tried writing it. Took me years. And I started not writing the X-Men stuff so much, and started writing other little slushy snippets of things. Here and there. Bit by bit.

I moved away from home and in with another boyfriend. That didn’t work out so well. I bounced around different homes, different relationships, writing all the while. An old friend died and I cried with my notebook in my lap, struggling to put the hurt into words so I could get some sort of handle on it–any handle would do, I just needed one.

I found it in the first few paragraphs of another novel–the infamous vampire novel, of course. Which, like the First Fantasy, will never see publication because it’s so sloppy and uneven. But my God, it felt good to write, and it felt good to bleed off some of the pressure of guilt and grief into the structure of a story.

I’ve gone through a marriage and a half since then, and the birth of two children. And several other life events. Writing has been there all the time–the friend that gives me strength to go on when I don’t think I can. The way of transforming the world to make it reasonable, or at least a little less scary.

A few Decembers ago I was in a bad car accident. (Twisty road, nighttime, a deer on its way home and me trying not to kill Bambi.) Hanging upside-down in the truck’s cab, one part of me was screaming in hysterical fear. The largest, Mommy-based part of me was calmly saying, first let’s get this seatbelt off and kick out a window.

Another part of me, the writer, was considering all of this and taking notes. So that’s what this feels like. Damn, it’s good material.

I was fairly calm, all things considered.

It all started with me and a notebook, the pen in my hand and my heart in my mouth, daring to do that most subversive of acts–tell my own story. To honestly and simply tell any story is an act of magic, an act of liberation. It is a lifering when you’re drowning, a way to scramble for higher ground when the water rises. It is sorcery, a way of remaking the world. I felt like a mutant when I was scribbling in those spiral-bound notebooks. Dangerous, lonely, and socially sneered-at–but with a secret power, a talent I could use for good or for evil, something I could do.

And each one of those words saved my life, over and over again. Each was a step up out of the abyss of believing myself worthless, a waste of skin and breath. Even today, each word, over and over, saves my life. It is a net when I’m falling, a rope when I’m drowning, a reminder to be calm when I’m in the middle of smashed metal and glass, smelling gasoline and so scared I can barely breathe.

I once received a fan letter from a woman who rescues elderly cocker spaniels. She said that some of my books had given her hope, that sometimes when she was feeling down about the plight of these poor dogs abandoned by their owners she could read them and forget, or read them and get a little bit of hope. Just a tiny sprinkle.

I cried.

Because if writing can save my own life, and if it can give someone else a little bit of hope, then I consider it one of the greatest acts of magic I’m capable of. Getting paid for it is nice, sure–I have kids to feed, after all. But if something that saved my life can also give someone else a little bit of hope…that’s damn precious. If even one person feels the world is a better place because of this story I’ve told as well as I’m able, I consider my time on earth well-spent.

And that’s really all this writer asks for.

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3. It Can Save Your Life