Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.

When I’m writing my own stuff, it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.

Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it's awesome. It's probably awesome. Tell me it's awesome, okay? Unless it sucks." — Nick

But I don't want to write my own fiction,' Cath said, as emphatically as she could. 'I don't want to write my own characters or my own worlds -- I don't care about them. . . . I'd rather pour myself into a world I love and understand than try to make something up out of nothing.

When she sat down to write, she didn't have to wade back into the story slowly, waiting to get used to the temperature.

How many people make a career out of writing anyway?' Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. 'I'll write because I love it, the way other people knit or . . . or scrapbook. And I'll find some other way to make money.

There's nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself." Professor Piper

This wasn't good, but it was something. Cath could always change it later. That was the beauty in stacking up words--they got cheaper, the more you had of them. It would feel good to come back and cut this when she had worked her way to something better.