He sounded absolutely miserable. “Are you ever going to speak to me?

I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.

The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while Foster the People plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

Do you ever get the feeling that something awful might happen?' James asked me. . . I sat up. 'I'm the awful thing that happens.

Creative" "Dangerously emo.

As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.

When he kissed me, his lips soft and careful, it was all the thrill of our first kiss and all the practiced familiarity of the accumulated memory of all our kisses.