I write to make sense of life, to share who I am and what I have experienced, to take the crazy bits and laugh at them, and cry a little over them too. I write plays because eventually I get to sit around a table in an empty theater, and talk to other artists about the story: how we can make it real, how we can overcome obstacles of time and space and, with the actors and director, how I can go back home and simplify the story, clarify a point, or make a character more empathetic. Then, months later, we open the show together, sitting in the dark with an audience and sharing that magical something we created together, that magical something that started with an idea that dropped down to me while out on a walk late one morning in early fall, or while in the shower, or sitting alone at my desk, that precious moment when a character first whispered in my ear and I was quiet enough to hear it, and experienced enough to know to write it down quickly, word for word. I write because I have something to say about life being worthwhile, when we struggle through it together. Such thinking isn’t cornball to me; it’s how I get through.