“Everything’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

I think, not only does this give insight into me as a person, it does an honestly great job at describing the vast majority (if not all of) the stories I write.

Because, let’s face it, even if I do awful, horrible things to my characters, I want them to be happy at the end. I like seeing them accomplish their goals, discover how to be better versions of themselves. I don’t like killing people off. Even when I try to kill people off I tend to immediately write up an outline as to how they still get their happy ending (remember Wes from Haunt of the Wilds…heh. How he got those fiery abilities comes back to haunt him.) I just can’t help it.

On the other hand, I do all those awful, horrible things to my characters… And sometimes people don’t like that. They’d prefer a much cleaner, safer zone, and I understand that. But I don’t want to write clean and safe; I want to write dragons eating people and secret assassin guilds…but have it all end up with some sort of happy/hopeful finale.

It gives me hope whenever I’m done in real life too. That hey, it might be the hellish middle chapters at any given point, but there’s always a point when the try/fail cycle becomes a try/succeed. As long as you don’t give up.

~Emmi