I Know What To Do With My

Yet For All The Depression No One Ever Quit. When Someone Quit, We Couldn't Believe It. 'i'm Becoming A Rafting Instructor On The Colorado River,' They Said. 'i'm Touring College Towns With My Garage Band.' We Were Dumbfounded. It Was Like They Were From Another Planet. Where Had They Found The Derring-do? What Would They Do About Car Payments? We Got Together For Going Away Drinks On Their Final Day And Tried To Hide Our Envy While Reminding Ourselves That We Still Had The Freedom And Luxury To Shop Indiscriminately.

That's One Of The Things About Comedy - I Think It Works Best When It's Contextualized, As Opposed To Kind Of An Island Of Cleverness.

Everyone Desires Relationships And Community. Most People Want To Belong To A Cohesive, Like-minded Group. It Staves Off Loneliness. It Promotes Identity. These Are Natural And Very Human Instincts.

Once I Had The Voice, I Knew I Wasn't Going To Fall Off The Bicycle. I Tap Right Back Into It. It Really Was Like Learning How To Ride A Bike - You Never Forget, And I Was Able To Carry It Along With Some Ease. I Never Encountered Any Stumping Problems That Left Me Not Knowing What To Do, So I Was Mostly Able To Hold My Ground. Of Course, I Should Mention That It Took Me A Long Time To Actually Acquire The Voice; There Were A Lot Of Frustrated Attempts Along The Way, Revisions To Long Sections And Versions Of The Book That I Abandoned.

The Thing Is, For Me, As A Fiction Writer, I Don't Think There's A Finer Testament To Our Lives Than This Thing That's Being Spurned - The Emotional Intelligence, The Ethics, The Beauty. It's All There. It's All So Fully Contained In A Novel That Succeeds. But At The Same Time, I Understand The Impulse To Put Away Childish Things.