Take heart from these other writers . . .

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world. (Natalie Goldberg) 

If you have a skeleton in your closet, take it out and dance with it! (Carolyn MacKenzie)

There is something to be said for writing down my beliefs just so I can question them. There is something to be said for setting down the patterns of my life just so I can break with it. (Hugh Prather)

A human being is a featherless, storytelling animal. (Sandor McNab)

Not writing alone, not even writing with empathy, makes a writer. It is writing plus life that makes a writer . . . because life alone creates a point of view. Irony of ironies, the more separations we experience, one from another, the more stories we have to tell-and the more pressing becomes the need to tell them. (Suzanne Lipsett)

I write to find out what I mean. (Denise Levertov)

Life has confided so many stories to me, I shall have to retell them to people who cannot read the book of life itself. (Etty Hillesum)

You are someone, and you have a right to your life. A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters. (Richard Hugo)