As per the advice of Colum McCann in the book “Letters to a Young Writer,” I’ve decided on a credo for my writing:

I am not the two-dimensional propaganda carefully crafted by those who wish I’d never been born. Nor am I any mythical heroine burdened with limitations of virtue, or vice. Imagination attempts representation but should not subscribe to theories of knowledge. I, like any character, breathe beyond the page and die without an ending. Predictable skin-deep desires may dance us through the script but truth is touched only when the heart can be felt screaming beneath the tripe.