Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

Because when an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.

The place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. it's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light.

Writing can be such a lonely endeavor that I do think community is also important.Meeting at cafes and exchanging work and reading to each other and giving each other little bits of encouragement and feedback and thoughts, I think that's an incredibly rich experience because what it does is it gives you a sense of community but also purpose. If I know I'm going to meet you in a cafe next Tuesday, I'm going to write something that I can hand to you. Discipline is such a challenge for so many writers and so I think that that's a key benefit of being in a group.

The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding.

I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside myself like a past-bloom flower in the wind. Every time I moved a muscle, another petal of me blew away. Please, I thought. Please.

One thing any backpacker will tell you is that it's tedious and monotonous. You're bored sometimes, so you really have to make the fun in your head.