Now That's an Analogy I Understand.

"Your work as a writer, when you are giving everything you have to your characters and your readers, will periodically make you feel like a single parent of a three-year-old, who is, by turns, wonderful, willful, terrible, crazed, and adoring.

"Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel. Other times, they'll reach out and touch you like adoring grandparents on their deathbeds, trying to memorize your face with their hands.

"But they are always yours, your books as well as your children. You helped bring your work into being, and every day you have to feed it, help it stay well, give it advice and love it when it ignores you.

"Your three-year-old and your work in progress teach you to give. They teach you to get out of yourself and become a person for someone else. This is probably the secret to happiness. So that's one reason to write.

"Your child and your work hold you hostage, suck you dry, ruin your sleep, mess with your head, treat you like dirt, and then you discover they've given you that gold nugget you were looking for all along."

~ Anne Lamott

(You guessed it. It's her again.)

I read books for lots of reasons... sometimes I choose it because I liked the cover. Other books come recommended. Some are a fun, fictional getaway. Others are so deep I have to read in small chunks and soak it in. But still others, like this one, are such a parallel to the life I am living (or pursuing) that I could not have chosen a better season to dive in.

I'm almost done with this book...so I'm trying to read more slowly.