Life isn't promised to anyone.

I didn't want to say it. As I scrambled through my phone looking for photos of Canoe #1 on the roof of the Kia—Did we really not take a photo?

Writing multiple POVs drove me crazy at times ... I wrote Mary in first person because I wanted readers to feel an intimacy with her, and I thought it would help them connect to her as an outsider.

Be careful to avoid binding your identity too closely to your pursuits.

If we get too attached to the goal—get an agent, sell this project—and forget that writing is allowed to be fun.

Art conveys truth in ways that propaganda and misinformation of war cannot readily combat. And art is a means to a better future.

Clearly there is a knowledge gap out there … there’s something that a hell of a lot of writers out there need to know, and they don’t know it right now.

But for our other mediums we must travel to what some cynics describe as the least truthful place of all—Hollywood.

If cultural connection, curiosity, and interrogation is some bedrock to our interest in, and fondness for the genre, what else draws audiences so endlessly to these films?

Kids are very aware of what’s going on around them. And I think they want to escape into worlds that ultimately make sense, regardless of the offbeat concepts or quirks that define those worlds.

It’s true that some people are born with a natural loathing for screenwriting. But that doesn’t mean it’s unattainable for the rest of us.

If a writer is going to present his POV in those big, neon letters, becoming almost strident in his or her moral clarity, then one should hope to be as clever as Sorkin.

Let women be women, let mothers be badass. Let us fight! You won’t be disappointed.

It’s almost like I’ve got a blank page on which to write this new entity from scratch. Similar to creating a character for a screenplay.

It was time to grow. I could see it coming miles away, and I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.