You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.

Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.

Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But "why" is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, "You wouldn't understand." I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer.

If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.