Conventional wisdom tells us we'll only be happier after a divorce if the marriage itself was a war zone.

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you’re dead, you’ll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who aren’t holding any paper.

I don't know if my mother was a narcissist - or bi-polar or borderline. Those were words she tossed around over the years.

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands.

In my experience, staying in a marriage that my ex and I both agreed had all its best moments behind it was epically depressing.

My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent.

Nourish the world with your words, yo.