On the Courage to Begin Again

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Editor called. Urgent. "Chapter 8 has to go." "Why? What's wrong with it?" "Nothing." "Then why delete it?" "It's the only good chapter." "That's... a reason to KEEP it." "It's making the others look bad." Long pause. "We should discuss chapter 8's salary."

Writing workshop. Third revision. Instructor reads my chapter. "It's missing something." "Character depth?" "No." "Tension?" "No." "Symbolism?" "Add a dog." "Why?" "So you can kill it in chapter 12." "I don't want to kill a—" "Do you want to be published or not?"

Manuscript stolen from my apartment. Called police. Filed report. Two weeks later, detective showed up. "We recovered your property." "You found the thief?" "We found your manuscript." "Wonderful! Where was it?" "In evidence. We all read it." He placed it on the table. "We're returning it." "Any leads on the burglar?" "Ma'am, we found nothing of value at the crime scene."