See, Popularity Is Complicated. You Have To

Adult Librarians Are Like Lazy Bakers: Their Patrons Want A Jelly Doughnut, So They Give Them A Jelly Doughnut. Children’s Librarians Are Ambitious Bakers: 'you Like The Jelly Doughnut? I’ll Get You A Jelly Doughnut. But You Should Try My Cruller, Too. My Cruller Is Gonna Blow Your Mind, Kid.

So Often We Try To Make Other People Feel Better By Minimizing Their Pain, By Telling Them That It Will Get Better (which It Will) Or That There Are Worse Things In The World (which There Are). But That's Not What I Actually Needed. What I Actually Needed Was For Someone To Tell Me That It Hurt Because It Mattered. I Have Found This Very Useful To Think About Over The Years, And I Find That It Is A Lot Easier And More Bearable To Be Sad When You Aren't Constantly Berating Yourself For Being Sad.

So I Walked Back To My Room And Collapsed On The Bottom Bunk, Thinking That If People Were Rain, I Was Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

Whenever I'm Asked What Advice I Have For Young Writers, I Always Say That The First Thing Is To Read, And To Read A Lot. The Second Thing Is To Write. And The Third Thing, Which I Think Is Absolutely Vital, Is To Tell Stories And Listen Closely To The Stories You're Being Told.

At Least I Carpe'd That One Diem.