For me, writing is about control. Or, more accurately, loss of control. Writing for me feels like getting naked in public. It feels scary and out of control. It makes me upset sometimes, because it makes me honest. When I sit down to write, for awhile, I read magazines and send emails and wander around, and then when I finally get up the guts to crack through the ice of my mind, I find myself in an odd universe of feelings I didn’t know I felt, and memories I didn’t know I carried. Writing is my best chance at happiness, and it is the riskiest thing I do. But that’s how life is. The riskiest things always yield the best, most beautiful things.

—Shauna Neiquist, Cold Tangerines