I was lucky to receive help at the beginning of my career and now I want to help other writers as much as I can.

Found, I told myself. Try to get found.

My lazy, unfair assumption is that everything's easier when you're young and stunning. And maybe it is! But I'd like to see for myself.

Writing let me escape... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from.

Every mother I've ever met, pretty much without exception, is doing the best job she can ever do.

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

I decided.. that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean on.