The fear of going back into your past – reliving trauma or grief – sometimes can block writing about the most important part of your story.

Carl Jung made the comparison of James Joyce and his daughter, who was schizophrenic, as two people in a river – the daughter was falling and could drown and the other, Joyce, who had written the dreamlike narrative of Finnegan’s Wake, was diving.

To go back to pain is diving in cold, dangerous water and a swift current, but ultimately you’re in charge of the dive and can return to the surface.

(from A Year of Writing Dangerously)

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If you're in west L. A. tonight 5/25, come join us for a reading from Victoria Zackheim's wonderful new anthology, He Said What? at Barnes & Noble on Third St. in Santa Monica. 7:00. Tomorrow night we're reading at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard.