The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of

Choose life. Choose love. And always remember to live.

Life doesn't happen to you. You can't just sit on a park bench and expect amazing things to whizz by on a conveyor belt. Life is what you put into it.

I'm terrified that my journey won't tie up all the loose ends nicely. Because this is a life, not just a story, and life doesn't always go the way stories tell you.

Trauma. It doesn't eke itself out over time. It doesn't split itself manageably into bite-sized chunks and distribute itself equally throughout your life. Trauma is all or nothing. A tsunami wave of destruction. A tornado of unimaginable awfulness that whooshes into your life - just for one key moment - and wreaks such havoc that, in just an instant, your whole world will never be the same again.

Time can be strange sometimes. It can leave imprints in particular places, leaving ghosts of memories trapped.

Love, as always, is what it comes down to. You have to love. It's the only way. Love for life. Love for others. And, most importantly, love for yourself.

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site.

Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?

Life is so bloody hard. I don't want the whole struggle to be pointless. If I'm going to get crap thrown at me from great heights my whole life, well, I want to damn well make sure I leave a mark on this world in exchange for all the misery.

Reality doesn't wait for you to be ready for it. It doesn't go away when you tell it to. It's like a persistent mosquito, determined to suck your blood and leave you with a bumpy itch that you can't stop scratching.

Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of.

Nobody tells you that large houses have this horrible habit of making you feel utterly alone.

But what if you needed to get what you want... just once?

I will always try to live.

It's not going to be easy. But then interesting things never are, are they?

My life is so crap that i cant even think of ten stupid things that can give me reason not to be miserable.

She needed to understand her pain and why it had brought her here.

Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out?

I'm boring. I'm a nobody. I don't live life. I don't embrace life.