There’s a story that’s worked it’s way into a talk I give about fantasy novels, about how words spoken by a character in an early draft of Bones (which Katherine had not read) turned out to be nearly identical to words in Katherine’s journal (which I’d not read, not until afterwards, and even then only in part). Katherine was so convinced she was alone and unworthy–yet it’s writing that taught me that no one is fully alone, because there’s nothing any one of us feels that others haven’t felt, too.
I’m not pleased with Katherine for giving me an anecdote that worked so neatly into my talk. But I can get through the telling of it without faltering.
Too many other writers have taken their own lives, in the years before and since. But being a writer isn’t an excuse. Not for anything.