it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have mythic proportions.

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth__ ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

You may be a serious writer if _.10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas _ but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub.8. a day without Roget__ Thesaurus is a day without sunshine.7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis.6. you__e ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn__ want to stop for lunch.5. grammar and punctuation turn you on.4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character.3. you__e worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard.2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere.1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.