This Is One Thing They Forget To

Being On A Book Tour Is Like Being On The Seesaw When You're A Little Kid. The Excitement Is In Having Someone To Play With, And In Rising Up In The Air, But Then You're At The Mercy Of Those Holding You Down, And If It's Your Older Brother, Or Paul Wolfowitz, They Leap Up, So That You Crash Down And Get Hurt.

The First Draft Is The Child's Draft, Where You Let It All Pour Out And Then Let It Romp All Over The Place, Knowing That No One Is Going To See It And That You Can Shape It Later.

If We Stay Where We Are, Where We're Stuck, Where We're Comfortable And Safe, We Die There... When Nothing New Can Get In, That's Death.

I Love Silence. I Seek And Create It At Every Opportunity. I Need It To Work.

Oh, My God. What If You Wake Up Some Day, And You're 65 Or 75, And You Never Got Your Novel Or Memoir Written; Or You Didn't Go Swimming In Warm Pools Or Oceans Because Your Thighs Were Jiggly Or You Had A Nice Big Comfortable Tummy; Or You Were Just So Strung Out On Perfectionism And People-pleasing That You Forgot To Have A Big Juicy Creative Life, Of Imagination And Radical Silliness And Staring Off Into Space Like When You Were A Kid? It's Going To Break Your Heart. Don't Let This Happen.