What makes a strong female character is a character who has weaknesses, who has flaws, who is maybe not immediately likable, but eventually relatable.

I do think reading is the best practice for writing, along with writing all the time. I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.

The idea that feeling confident and feeling misunderstood are mutually exclusive really bugs me.

My life motto is basically to lower your standards and expectations so you're never disappointed and never put any trust in anything, and I try to prepare for the day that I wake up and everyone I know is like LOL JK BEST LONG - RUNNING PRACTICAL JOKE EVER, so I've never really let myself freak out or get too excited about anything. Not in an effort to be cool or not care or anything, just out of neurosis.

Then people expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple, when, in actuality, women are complicated, women are multifaceted - not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.

I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.

Feminism to me means fighting. It's a very nuanced, complex thing, but at the very core of it I'm a feminist because I don't think being a girl limits me in any way.