Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.

You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.

The problem is we think we exist.

We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet we feel peaceful there.