This entire hackneyed notion was originally intended as a work-in-progress.
Much as our everyday lives are. I still don't know where it's going or where I'll end up,
but it's the journey not the destination, right?

Who am I?
This is a courageous question.
As a writer and a man I am involved in one central struggle -
to discover and accept who I am. I believe all fear has its roots in denial.
I have, at one time or another, denied everything.
Every fact of my specific self.

My parents, my Midwest mentality, my Americaness, my Irishness,
my appetites, my mortality, my need for love and acceptance,
my jealousy, my sadness, my hope.

I am not a courageous person by nature.
I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life,
you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live.
It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more.
All the really exciting things possible during the course of
a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have.
A deep breath and a leap.

Writing is acting is directing is living your life.
I have told you the things I have told you so that you
would know something of my approach to writing.
I see no difference between writing a narrative and living my life.
the same things that make a moment in my writing have life.
And when I move in my writing,
I have moved in my life.

There is no illusion.
It is all the same thing.