Take risks in your writing, they say, and I try. But the real danger in writing is the way you fall in love – the way your fingers stroke the keys and create new life, not unlike those faces in your head – your controlling mother, absent minded father, precious little dog. Yet these characters lie down upon the page in blessed synchronicity. Their crooked features fascinate and suddenly it’s beautiful cursive looping up and down, hypnotic, scintillating words. These characters juggle life’s conflicts in true poetic form, laughing with passion, they eat, pray and love. They may have authentic problems and require real-world solutions, yet we romanticize it all: the writer, the reader, the critics, the story. Reality is a sharp edge on which these characters may dance, but never fall, never for real, for if they had, if they had plummeted to the ground, without critical acclaim, without a perfect climax, perfect…