A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I don’t ever want to go back to believing life is meaningless. I know there are biochemical causes for some forms of depression, but I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story—by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they’d be surprised a

Mike told us the reason he signed up to ride across America. He said he signed up so he could finish. He said he’d quit three marriages, and he wouldn’t quit a fourth. He said he’d quit on children, and he didn’t want to quit on the responsibility of being a father with the ones who still loved him. He started crying, then. Mike said he knew deep d

Darius Goes West.

William Zinsser says that writers “love to have written,”

If a story sets our moral compass, my compass had changed from cynicism to hope.

“Writing a story isn’t about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn’t think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person.” His voice was like thunder now. “You put your characters through hell. You put them t

we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. The point of a story is the character arc, the change.

when something hard happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or better. I chose to get better. It’s made all the difference.”

A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it is the basic structure of a good story.