Who's Raoul?

The best two pieces of advice I have ever received have both come from writers I am lucky enough to have studied under. They were specifically about writing, but my brain has smooshed them into a shape that allows them to be about life in general.

1. When a fellow student asked about page length for an assignment, Phil Heldrich answered "start at the beginning, write what needs to be said and when you get to the end... stop." Later I found out that like all great writers, he stole this tidbit of genius and made it his own. Smart man. 

2. I was in my Masters program at Goddard College, over-thinking a section of a short story I was working on it. My advisor, Michael Klein, finally got fed up with me and said "fiction's not that fucking complicated, if you need to get Raoul into the elevator, just get Raoul into the goddamned elevator!" 

The latter has become, for me, a mantra of sorts. When I over-think things, when problems seem far too tangled, when I start to question everything, I remind myself that life is not that fucking complicated and that I need to just get the metaphorical Raoul into the proverbial elevator. In writing, at work, in parenting, in relationships, in life... it just needs to get done. Stop thinking; do shit.

I need a place to think out loud. This is it. Meet Raoul.