Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy.

Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.

Love has a funny way of showing up when you aren't looking for it and didn't plan on it.

And when you clear away the cobwebs of the description of every job in the world, at the bottom of that job is service. It's service. And I took that ethic and applied it to my writing craft.

Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don't feed the source, it dissipates entirely.Same is true of liking a boy. If you cut off the thoughts, if you stop pinning, you're free to find a boy who is attainable.

I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I'm always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses, how dialogue sounds, what feels authentic and sounds real, what's funny, how to build distinctive and original characters - all the aspects of playwriting, scene-building, the architecture of dramatizing.