Sometimes it can fit into a story.

Fourteen books have shown this. In small and big ways. Four more books will continue to show it next year. And hopefully many more in the future.

Memories shared. Thoughts documented. Expressions uttered. Feelings felt. Feeling felt and unshared and untold. Feelings bottled up like a genie, just waiting for a chance to be spoken, just waiting for a chance to be known.

The maelstrom that’s gone on off in my mind since my teen days has rarely been fully seen and heard. But glimpses come in the work. Doubts, frustrations, joys, passions, curiosities, ironies, hilarities, tragedies—pieces of these have all gone inside the work.

The work.

The story.

The chunk of memory and emotion wrapped up in someone else’s story.

I know a thousand other novelists and every one writes for his or her reason.

But this is why I write.

To do something with all that stuff.

To take the insecurities of a teenager and remember. To take the ideals of a twenty-something and remember. To take the insanity of a thirty-something and remember.

To remember and to try somehow to move on.

Sometimes it can be a dream I wake up from. Sometimes it can be the chords of a distant song heard while driving. Sometimes it can be a fading sunset.

They can all recall something. A mood, a moment, a melancholy button that’s pushed inside of me.

“Where do you come up with your ideas?”

The clichéd question sometimes is completely wrong.

Because the ideas are endless.

The reasons I write them are the real question.

Windows into my heart and my soul and my history. That’s what the stories are. That’s why I write them.

That’s why I’ll always be writing.