My writing life began in writing letters to the dead. I was eight years old, writing a eulogy for an older cousin that was lost much too soon to a drunk driver one morning on his way to work. It led down a road to poetry, fantasy, more eulogies–and basically becoming a sad, yet terribly potent gateway drug into the world of writing.
A poem from that maudlin phase of zero to now that’s always stuck with me, and been something paraphrased in my head at any crucial moment that slothfulness overcomes...