I'm a semi-failed writer, but I'm a capital-F Failed musician.

They say you have to get and stay sober for yourself, and of course I agree with that, but I've really appreciated the added stakes of having someone relying on me for survival. My daughter makes me want to do right. That doesn't mean I won't relapse again. It's happened to me before. But she adds a layer of love in my life that I've never known.

I'm a very tactile learner, so I need analog index cards, moving them all about, trying out various sequences for the book's architecture.

Memoirs need confusion. It's the thing every human has in common. We are magnificently confused.

It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged settings for a reader to inhabit like a place.

Today is going to be free of the past. Today, the past can't hurt me.

It takes a lot of time to be a good junkie or alcoholic - you spend hours getting the necessary supplies, then imbibing, then recovering, rinse and repeat. That's like eighteen hours of a day. And assuming you get out of that lifestyle before it macerates your heart, you have that Junkie Tunnel Vision, except now you get to use it for something positive: you know how to work tirelessly for one thing. Instead of using that tunnel vision to get high, I use it to make art.