Rewrite My Story Quotes

I don't get to rewrite my story; I just have to stumble to the end of it.

I am one man with a laptop. When I give the world my characters, it's because I don't want to keep them for myself. You don't like what I made them do? Fucking tell me I'm wrong! Rewrite the story. Throw in a new plot twist. Make up your own ending.

It takes one person to rewrite the history book.

I’m keeping my love story, not because it included both martyr and sacrifice, or because it’s the story I wanted, it’s because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

Our beliefs are merely stories in our minds that we ourselves wrote long ago. Knowing that, don’t you feel empowered to rewrite them if they no longer serve you? Scan your mind for viruses called fears, anxieties, judgments, doubts, hatred and despair, and put a little note next to them that says “Outdated; no longer valid.” I’ve learned so much from my mistakes, I think I’m gonna go out there and make some more! —Anonymous

My journey, however, has followed a far less predictable story: stalled chapters, unexpected plot twists, and dozens of rewrites that have left the ending more than a little uncertain.

I love you, and it's driving me crazy to see you so upset. I want to fix it, and I know I can't. But what I want to do is rewrite this whole world so you can fix it. I want to come up with a story that all the world will choose to celebrate, and in it, the people we love will never get sick, and the people we love will never be sad for long, and there would be unlimited frozen hot chocolate. Maybe if it were up to me I wouldn't have the whole world collectively believe in Santa Claus, but I would definitely have them collectively believe in something, because there is a messed-up kind of beauty in the way we can bend over backward to make life seem magical when we want to. In other words, after giving it some thought , I think that reality has the distinct potential to complete suck, and the way to get around that is to step out of reality with someone you completely, unadulteratedly enjoy. In my life, that's you. And if it takes dressing up like Santa to get that across to you, then so be it.

Jesus didn’t have to extend His love. He didn’t have to think of me when He went up on that cross. He didn’t have to rewrite my story from one of beauty to one of brokenness and create a whole new brand of beauty. He simply didn’t have to do it, but He did. He bought me. He bought me that day He died, and He showed His power when He overcame death and rose from the grave. He overcame my death in that moment. He overcame my fear of death in that unbelievable, beautiful moment, and the fruit of that death, that resurrection, and that stunning grace is peace. It is the hardest peace, because it is brutal. Horribly brutal and ugly, and we want to look away, but it is the greatest, greatest story that ever was. And it was, and it is.

But the truth is, I don’t have my mother. I never will. I don’t get to rewrite my story; I just have to stumble to the end of it.

You can’t take away the past; you can only add to the narrative. There is a narrative about Muslims that already exists. I’m not here to undo or rewrite history. That is propaganda or an impossibility. What I, and others, can do is expand on the notion of what it means to be Muslim, continue the story line that survives alongside us.

I want to hold her, to tell her how deep down I hate to see her cry. But right now I can’t see through the anger—the hurt—of her pretending that for one summer, she and I weren’t each other’s world. For me, she stayed my world every day after.

A crucial step on this journey is to acknowledge that the “self” is a fictional story that the intricate mechanisms of our mind constantly manufacture, update, and rewrite. There is a storyteller in my mind that explains who I am, where I come from, where I am heading, and what is happening to me right now.

God began rewriting the ending to my life's story, our worlds collided with His, and He provided us with the most beautiful second chance.

God began rewriting the ending to my life's story, our worlds collided with His, and He provided us with the most beautiful second chance.

Her words unravel me. I haven’t even inched inside her yet, and I know no one else could ever compare to her. She’s my everything. My ruining, and I want everything she’ll give me.

For my entire life, my heart has only beat for one person. That’s you, Cade Jennings. Even without knowing if you’d ever be mine, I knew I was yours.

She’s my everything. My ruining, and I want everything she’ll give me.

Spread those legs open and wide for me, baby. It’s time for me to show you how much better my tongue is compared to your fingers.

I do.” “Ask me again if I’m yours.” “Are you mine?” “My heart only beats like that for you.” I press her hand against my chest, proving to her that no one controls my heartbeats like she does.

Look at you being such a good fucking girl, coating my cock in your cum. You’re doing so fucking good at making sure my cock is nice and wet, making it easier to slide into your perfect pussy.

After I left, I cried myself to sleep so many times, wondering where things went wrong. I obsessed over the idea of you being my world and I was nothing to you. You can’t tell me years later that you loved me.

When I give the world my characters, it’s because I don’t want to keep them for myself. You don’t like what I made them do? Fucking tell me I’m wrong! Rewrite the story. Throw in a new plot twist. Make up your own ending.

Your pinkies would be touching across the pillows, and I could tell that no matter the fact you had just lost a mother and your father was distant, that you were going to be okay. Because of my baby boy, you were going to be okay.

I can’t keep it a secret any longer.” I grab her arms, pulling her closer to my body. “I fell for you so hard and fast, it was almost like that love had always been there. I loved you, Goldie. I loved you so fucking much that it killed me to watch you leave.

I sigh, wishing I could be honest and tell her I think she’ll be the only person I love my entire life. I think the ghost of our memories will haunt me on the ranch. It’ll be bittersweet to watch her make every single one of her dreams come true without me in her life.

My eyes burn with unshed tears from the reminder of how unbelievably hard that time of my life was. It felt like everything was going wrong and I couldn’t tell a soul—not even Pippa—what was happening. Nobody knew that I’d had my heart broken by a man who was my entire world.

But this face, my face, like all faces, is not only a collection of traces- it's also the first draft of a future face... In my young face I instinctively read a first wrinkle of doubt, a first smile of indifference: lines of a story I'll rewrite and understand on a future reading.

The experiment changed Sally’s life. In the following days she realised she has been through a ‘near-spiritual experience…what defined the experience was not feeling smarter or learning faster: the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut up…My brain without self-doubt was a revelation. There was suddenly this incredible silence in my head…I hope you can sympathise with me when I tell you that the thing I wanted most acutely for the weeks following my experience was to go back and strap on those electrodes. I also started to have a lot of questions. Who was I apart from the angry bitter gnomes that populate my mind and drive me to failure because I’m too scared to try? And where did those voices come from?’7 Some of those voices repeat society’s prejudices, some echo our personal history, and some articulate our genetic legacy. All of them together, says Sally, create an invisible story that shapes our conscious decisions in ways we seldom grasp. What would happen if we could rewrite our inner monologues, or even silence them completely on occasion? 8

And in order to understand ourselves, a crucial step is to acknowledge that the ‘self’ is a fictional story that the intricate mechanisms of our mind constantly manufacture, update and rewrite. There is a storyteller in my mind that explains who I am, where I am coming from, where I am heading to, and what is happening right now. Like the government spin doctors who explain the latest political upheavals, the inner narrator repeatedly gets things wrong but rarely, if ever, admits it. And just as the government builds up a national myth with flags, icons and parades, so my inner propaganda machine builds up a personal myth with prized memories and cherished traumas that often bear little resemblance to the truth.

I pull her body into mine. My arms wrap around her, caging her in and pressing her to my heartbeat. Her tears don’t hurt the way they did last time. They still hurt, but it’s different. Last time it was so heartbreaking to see her cry it felt like a piece of my soul died having to hurt her. This time, it feels like a piece of my heart is leaving, but I have the comfort and assurance to know that it’ll return.

You told me to leave!” she shouts, her hands angrily thrashing through the air. “You told me to leave and that you wanted nothing to do with me once I did. So that’s what I did, Cade. I left. Even though it broke my heart to leave things how we did.” She gasps for air as she tries to keep a grip on her emotions. “You can’t pretend like we know anything about each other now. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.

write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. If you’re very lucky (this is my idea, not John Gould’s, but I believe he would have subscribed to the notion), more will want to do the former than the latter.

Why the fuck would I want you to stay away when I was in love with you?” Her mouth falls open. “What?” she asks, her voice breaking. I let out a dejected sigh, anger and sadness coursing through my veins. I shake my head. “You knew that.” “No.” She shakes her head back and forth, her eyes misting over. “I didn’t know. I hoped. God, I wanted that more than anything. But I asked you if you loved me and you told me no. How can I trust you now?

I’m not sure what to say about this book and this series and this piece of my soul. I’ve spent almost every day of the last eight years with Ty and Zane, and saying good-bye to them as this series comes to a close is bittersweet. My world will be an emptier place without them. Ty and Zane started their lives as a message between myself and my former cowriter. A message asking, “What should we do now?” “How about murder?” was my reply, and that was that. We wrote Cut & Run, and we finished it with enough content to fill two books, and in the end Ty and Zane walked off into the sunset, happy and in love. It didn’t feel right. After a day to let the ending settle, it was painfully obvious that this was not the proper end of the story. There was more to tell, and the rewrite began. A story arc formed—a tortuous, cruel story that would force Ty and Zane to work for their happy ending. It

What Kant took to be the necessary schemata of reality,' says a modern Freudian, 'are really only the necessary schemata of repression.' And an experimental psychologist adds that 'a sense of time can only exist where there is submission to reality.' To see everything as out of mere succession is to behave like a man drugged or insane. Literature and history, as we know them, are not like that; they must submit, be repressed. It is characteristic of the stage we are now at, I think, that the question of how far this submission ought to go--or, to put it the other way, how far one may cultivate fictional patterns or paradigms--is one which is debated, under various forms, by existentialist philosophers, by novelists and anti-novelists, by all who condemn the myths of historiography. It is a debate of fundamental interest, I think, and I shall discuss it in my fifth talk. Certainly, it seems, there must, even when we have achieved a modern degree of clerical scepticism, be some submission to the fictive patterns. For one thing, a systematic submission of this kind is almost another way of describing what we call 'form.' 'An inter-connexion of parts all mutually implied'; a duration (rather than a space) organizing the moment in terms of the end, giving meaning to the interval between tick and tock because we humanly do not want it to be an indeterminate interval between the tick of birth and the tock of death. That is a way of speaking in temporal terms of literary form. One thinks again of the Bible: of a beginning and an end (denied by the physicist Aristotle to the world) but humanly acceptable (and allowed by him to plots). Revelation, which epitomizes the Bible, puts our fate into a book, and calls it the book of life, which is the holy city. Revelation answers the command, 'write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter'--'what is past and passing and to come'--and the command to make these things interdependent. Our novels do likewise. Biology and cultural adaptation require it; the End is a fact of life and a fact of the imagination, working out from the middle, the human crisis. As the theologians say, we 'live from the End,' even if the world should be endless. We need ends and kairoi and the pleroma, even now when the history of the world has so terribly and so untidily expanded its endless successiveness. We re-create the horizons we have abolished, the structures that have collapsed; and we do so in terms of the old patterns, adapting them to our new worlds. Ends, for example, become a matter of images, figures for what does not exist except humanly. Our stories must recognize mere successiveness but not be merely successive; Ulysses, for example, may be said to unite the irreducible chronos of Dublin with the irreducible kairoi of Homer. In the middest, we look for a fullness of time, for beginning, middle, and end in concord. For concord or consonance really is the root of the matter, even in a world which thinks it can only be a fiction. The theologians revive typology, and are followed by the literary critics. We seek to repeat the performance of the New Testament, a book which rewrites and requites another book and achieves harmony with it rather than questioning its truth. One of the seminal remarks of modern literary thought was Eliot's observation that in the timeless order of literature this process is continued. Thus we secularize the principle which recurs from the New Testament through Alexandrian allegory and Renaissance Neo-Platonism to our own time. We achieve our secular concords of past and present and future, modifying the past and allowing for the future without falsifying our own moment of crisis. We need, and provide, fictions of concord.

It means neither one of us can hide the fact that we know every single fucking thing there is to know about the other person. Time, miles, nothing will change that I know you, Goldie. I know you almost better than I know myself. And I know for a fucking fact that you’re lying.” “How?” “Because I know how much it fucking hurts my soul to see another man look at you the way I look at you. To see him touch you the way I want to touch you. And I know that after every fucking thing between us, even after you leaving me, that you feel the same.

Nine years ago you made a wish, and I desperately wanted to know what you’d wished for. I wanted it to be for me—for us. I want to spend every birthday with you, be your every birthday wish, Goldie. Because you’ll always be mine. I want to be your forever. There isn’t a version of my future that doesn’t have you in it.” He taps his chest, hitting against his heart. “You’re my entire heart. My entire world. I love you so much that it feels like I live and breathe you. Marry me, Goldie? Make me the luckiest man in the world and become my wife?

Like Willow, we all can honor our pain and then move toward something more joyful. We can focus on our resilience and remember our joys or sorrows. We can craft stories that tell us we are loved, strong, resilient, respected, worthy, generous, forgiven, and happy. We all have such stories if only we can uncover them.... To rewrite our story, we need effort and imagination. We can access imagination by journaling, painting, music, or art. One of my favorite things about writing is that I get to tell a second story about whatever happens to me. And, in this second story I can shape events in ways that are more beautiful and happiness-producing. Indeed, what is all art if not an attempt to tell a better story? Some of our stories bring out the best in us, whereas others induce despair, fear or anger. We can ask ourselves questions that remind us of our kindness, hard work, and strength over the years. We can explore our uncelebrated virtues and our survival skills.

Well . . . why not? Many fine books have been written in prison. And it’s not like I’ll be a total stranger up there in Carson City. The warden will recognize me; and the Con Boss—I once interviewed them for The New York Times. Along with a lot of other cons, guards, cops and assorted hustlers who got ugly, by mail, when the article never appeared. Why not? They asked. They wanted their stories told. And it was hard to explain; in those circles, that everything they told me went into the wastebasket or at least the dead-end file because the lead paragraphs I wrote for that article didn’t satisfy some editor three thousand miles away—some nervous drone behind a grey formica desk in the bowels of a journalistic bureaucracy that no con in Nevada will ever understand—and that the article finally died on the vine, as it were, because I refused to rewrite the lead. For reasons of my own . . . None of which would make much sense in The Yard. But what the hell? Why worry about details?

I read a wonderful passage in an interview with Carolyn Chute, the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine, who was discussing rewriting: “I feel like a lot of time my writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no tree. You’re going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a tree, but we’ll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon.” This is how I’ve arrived at my plots a number of times. I would have all these wonderful shiny bulbs, each self-contained with nothing to hang them on. But I would stay with the characters, caring for them, getting to know them better and better, suiting up each morning and working as hard as I could, and somehow, mysteriously, I would come to know what their story was. Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad. Some

Our conversation went a little like this: “God, if I lay down my need for those who hurt me to be punished, it doesn’t mean that what they did is okay, right?” “Right.” “So, just to be clear, we are in agreement that what they did is wrong, correct?” “Kim, what they did was wrong. I’m sorry you were hurt.” “When I surrender this to You and release those who hurt me, You know for sure that I’m not saying that I agree with them, right?” “Do you trust Me?” “I trust You, God, but do I still get to be strong? Does surrendering and letting go mean that I’m weak?” “Are you relying on your strength or Mine? You are strong when you trust in Me and rely on My strength.” Ugh. And just like that, God broke through another layer of my old need to protect myself through control. It felt so important to me to be strong. My entire childhood I had to be strong for my mom and siblings. I had to be strong to be brave and defend myself. I had to be strong so fear would not cripple me. And it seemed to me that to trust in God, to surrender, to depend on His strength, to forgive those who hurt me, and to not demand punishment meant I could no longer be strong. I hated that! As I was pondering why this upset me so much, another lie was exposed—the lingering belief that no one can take care of me like I can. Part of me still thought I couldn’t really trust God with my heart and emotions.

Astonishment: these women’s military professions—medical assistant, sniper, machine gunner, commander of an antiaircraft gun, sapper—and now they are accountants, lab technicians, museum guides, teachers…Discrepancy of the roles—here and there. Their memories are as if not about themselves, but some other girls. Now they are surprised at themselves. Before my eyes history “humanizes” itself, becomes like ordinary life. Acquires a different lighting. I’ve happened upon extraordinary storytellers. There are pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics. The person sees herself so clearly from above—from heaven, and from below—from the ground. Before her is the whole path—up and down—from angel to beast. Remembering is not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a reality that is no more, but a new birth of the past, when time goes in reverse. Above all it is creativity. As they narrate, people create, they “write” their life. Sometimes they also “write up” or “rewrite.” Here you have to be vigilant. On your guard. At the same time pain melts and destroys any falsehood. The temperature is too high! Simple people—nurses, cooks, laundresses—behave more sincerely, I became convinced of that…They, how shall I put it exactly, draw the words out of themselves and not from newspapers and books they have read—not from others. But only from their own sufferings and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, strange as it may be, are often more subject to the working of time. Its general encrypting. They are infected by secondary knowledge. By myths. Often I have to go for a long time, by various roundabout ways, in order to hear a story of a “woman’s,” not a “man’s” war: not about how we retreated, how we advanced, at which sector of the front…It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter. I sit for a long time, sometimes a whole day, in an unknown house or apartment. We drink tea, try on the recently bought blouses, discuss hairstyles and recipes. Look at photos of the grandchildren together. And then…After a certain time, you never know when or why, suddenly comes this long-awaited moment, when the person departs from the canon—plaster and reinforced concrete, like our monuments—and goes on to herself. Into herself. Begins to remember not the war but her youth. A piece of her life…I must seize that moment. Not miss it! But often, after a long day, filled with words, facts, tears, only one phrase remains in my memory (but what a phrase!): “I was so young when I left for the front, I even grew during the war.” I keep it in my notebook, although I have dozens of yards of tape in my tape recorder. Four or five cassettes… What helps me? That we are used to living together. Communally. We are communal people. With us everything is in common—both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and how to tell about our suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and ungainly life.

Of all the letters I’ve received from readers, my favorite came from a homeless man. It arrived in a dirty envelope with no return address, and it was scrawled on neon orange paper. It was signed “Berkeley Baby.” It would never have made it past the New York Times mailroom after the anthrax scare. The letter writer turned out to have been the night rewrite editor on the metro desk at the New York Times before he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the mid-1970s. Since then, he had adopted the name Berkeley Baby and lived on the streets of Berkeley, California, near the university, a forlorn, sad figure not unlike the Phantom of Fine Hall. He wrote, “John Nash’s story gives me hope that one day the world will come back to me too.

That would be a ghostwriter worth keeping hold of! But my books are relatively short. A GRRM volume is well over twice as long. I think my main asset is that I write things once. I don’t have the draft draft draft disease that some suffer from. I’ve never deleted a page and rewritten it, some authors rewrite whole chapters or remove or add characters. That’s going to make it a lengthy process.

Yeah,” said Alex excitedly. “We’ve read all the Seth the Elf and Captain Cowman comics that we have, and we finished Diary of a Skateboarding Cowman, so we thought we’d write a comic of our own.” “Gosh, how fun,” said Porkins, “what’s it called?” “The Legend of Carl the Creeper,” said Carl. “It’s the true story of all my awesome adventures.” Dave picked up one of the pages. On the page was a crudely drawn picture of Carl fighting a big green squid. Above the picture of Carl was a speech bubble: Taek that craken! Itz creepa tiem! And above the picture of the squid was another speech bubble: O no Carl the creepa, u hav defeeted me! “Um, there are a few spelling errors,” said Dave. “No one cares about spelling errors,” said Carl, “it’s all about the epic story.” “Wait a minute,” said Dave, looking at the picture again, “is this meant to be you defeating the kraken? Are you punching it in the face?” “I’ve changed some of the stories to make them a bit more exciting,” shrugged Carl. Dave picked up another page. This one showed Carl and Alex both beating up a big black monster with tentacles. There was a speech bubble above Alex’s head: Taek that endabrin! Did sumbuddy orda the Alex? “Um, and I suppose this is you two defeating Enderbrine?” said Dave. “And what is this thing you’re saying Alex — ‘did somebody order the Alex?’” “Yeah,” grinned Alex. “Captain cowman’s catchphrase is ‘did somebody order the beef?’. So, my catchphrase is ‘did somebody order the Alex?’” “These are all early drafts,” said Carl. “Once we bring it to a publisher and they pay us a load of emeralds, we’ll get our secretary to rewrite it all.” Dave picked up another page. This one showed Carl punching Herobrine and Herobrine’s head exploding. “Right,” said Dave, putting the page back down, “um, it looks great so far.

I'm keeping my love story, not because it included both martyr and sacrifice, or because it's the story I wanted, it's because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

The sins of the father are visited upon future generations…” EXODUS 34:7 Oh, how I used to hate this verse. I once had a client tell me that she hated it, too. It made her think of an-impossible-to-please, vengeful god. A god she wanted no part of. I completely understood, because for a big part of my life, I agreed with her. But then one day, a different perspective on this controversial verse presented itself to me. One that I shared with my client. It’s one I would like to share with you, too. What if this verse is not some warning of wrath from a vengeful, punitive deity? What if this verse is not talking about something God does to us, but rather something we do to ourselves—and to each other? What if this verse is actually a compassionate, albeit cryptic, warning? Perhaps it is a rallying cry to get us to show up and own our crap; to heal and to grow, and to set future generations up to do the same. What if this verse is a plea from on High to recognize our choices can set off ripple effects that are far beyond our understanding and that our choices influence the future beyond what we are able to recognize in the tangible, relational realms. And what if this ominous, poetic warning is really pointing us toward something much more scientific and even holistic? What if it’s a proof-text that we are incapable of living compartmentalized lives—that every part of us is inextricably connected to the other, not only within our own lives, but in all the lives that lead up to our existence? What if the ripples set in motion by those who have gone before us cast destructive waves upon the present and have potential to reach into future generations, unless there is some intervention?

Meggie fell for a priest. I fell for a prophet. We declared war on their calling and cause, and neither of us won. But I’m keeping my love story, not because it included both martyr and sacrifice, or because it’s the story I wanted, it’s because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

My thumb gently brushes over the photo as I try to figure out what it means that he still has it. Not only had he held on to it for so long, but he’d kept it tucked into his favorite hat.

Won't Let You Be My Downfall" (Verse 1) In the glow of neon lights, I find my stride, Chasing dreams bigger than the Friday night sky. You thought you'd see me crumble, thought I'd crawl, But I won't let you be my downfall. (Chorus) I'm riding high, on this urban rodeo, Got my heart guarded, in the city's afterglow. You can't hold me back, can't make me stall, 'Cause I won't let you be my downfall. (Verse 2) Got my boots laced up, with a modern twist, Walking streets paved with chances I won't miss. Your shadows linger, but I'll walk tall, I won't let you be my downfall. (Bridge) This heart beats to a rhythm, bold and new, I'm rewriting my story, without a trace of you. I'm not just a number, I'm a name they'll call, And I won't let you be my downfall. (Chorus) I'm riding high, on this urban rodeo, Got my heart guarded, in the city's afterglow. You can't hold me back, can't make me stall, 'Cause I won't let you be my downfall. (Outro) So here's to the nights, that turn into dawn, To the fights we fight, to the strength we've drawn. I'm standing proud, through it all, 'Cause I won't let you be my downfall.

I may not seem the ideal person in your eyes, but I was your compass when you needed a direction. I may not be your favourite memory, but one special flashback will always remind you of me. I may no longer fit into your plan, but I am glad I was one of the ideas that helped rewrite your story. I may not be the lamp you need in your foggy days, but the gleam I left in you will shine through the ages. I may not have the courage to tell you it's over between us, but goodbyes are not my strongest words. We may not want to keep in touch again, but I pray our paths lead us to our desired destinations.

This is something I've learned from writing my own short stories, novels and screenplays. Editors and film producers will often keep asking for rewrites until all, or at least most, of the above elements are dealt with. I didn't realize that this was what was happening until I took a step back and analyzed my stories from the perspective of the hero's journey. When I began to incorporate the above elements into my stories and novels, my acceptance rate bloomed. Plus, readers seemed to be much happier with my stories without being able to vocalize why.

You have the Elements to write a grand Tale,” Kai said with a sad smile. “But you will not rewrite Story.” He thumped his staff on the wooden floor, and his form flickered, grew taller, and then morphed into a towering warrior-king, crowned with white fire and readied for battle. “My name is Story, and I cannot be unwritten.

I know the world is not interested in my stories, still i will write and rewrite it, just to remind myself who i was, who i am, and who i could be.

But this is what I learned during those painful nights: the only way to break free was to rewrite my story. Because something would happen every time my pen stopped, night after night. It was like my soul was coming back to my body. Like the deepest parts of me that got knocked around and drowned out by all the crap I let the world convince me about who I was came back to the surface. And what was left was only what was real and true.

What is the most surprising thing you discovered while writing this book? For years I thought this story was for my friend, Anne, who lost the rest of her life story. It wasn’t until probably the fifth or sixth rewrite, absorbing all the life lessons and wisdom Annie encounters in so many ways, that I was the one feeling healed.

Rewriting the narrative so as to make my life what I want it to be is the stuff of fiction penned by the hands of fools who have yet to realize that truth writes stories bigger than any eraser fiction can conjure up.

Control Find the genetic code for control and rewrite it. Act your way to new thinking. Short, early conversations make efficient work. Use “I intend to . . .” to turn passive followers into active leaders. Resist the urge to provide solutions. Eliminate top-down monitoring systems. Think out loud (both superiors and subordinates). Embrace the inspectors. Competence Take deliberate action. We learn (everywhere, all the time). Don’t brief, certify. Continually and consistently repeat the message. Specify goals, not methods. Clarity Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors. Build trust and take care of your people. Use your legacy for inspiration. Use guiding principles for decision criteria. Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors. Begin with the end in mind. Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience. It’s my hope that this organization of the mechanisms in this book will help you put these ideas into action as you adopt the leader-leader philosophy.

But I'm keeping my love story, not because it included both a martyr and sacrifice, or because it's the story I wanted, it's because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

Tonight, I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world they shine brighter,” I tell her, knowing at least that’s the truth. They fight for attention from her. She’s my Goldie. The sun. The stars fail in comparison to her, but they sure do put up a fight.

He’s still upset with me for leaving Sutten behind. If he wants to be left alone with his grief, then I’ll leave him alone. Even if being back here brings back all the memories—all the feelings—from a time when he was my everything. To be able to get through this, to be around him, I need to forget everything that's transpired between us and just be there for him and his family.

She’s always been my kryptonite, my favorite drug and sobriety was never an option. But the problem is—I’d rather deal with the addiction to her than the suffocating realization that my mom is gone forever.

You don’t know me anymore.” I know my words come out harsh, but I can’t help it with her. I am angry at her. There are so many reasons for me to be upset. The biggest one being I hate that after all these years apart, I still feel an intense pull toward her. “You don’t know what my looks mean. Maybe that’s just how I always look.

We both know my words were harsh. The hidden meaning behind them was clear. She should’ve been home more. It broke my mom’s heart that she never came back to visit. It was low of me to bring attention to it, but it needed to be said. Really, I’m just angry with her because not only did she leave this place and leave Pippa and my mom behind—but she left me, too. And even though I told her to go all those years ago, I never could’ve imagined she’d take me so seriously.

I’m done,” I say exhausted, already turning my body toward the tent. I’m going to go to bed and wake up tomorrow and pretend that my heart never wanted him so desperately. He clearly doesn’t deserve it.

I’m tired of that nickname, too,” I point out. If he ever stopped calling me that, I think my heart would break, but he doesn’t have to know that.

I’m tired of fighting myself over how much I think about you. I’m tired of telling myself that I shouldn’t look at my little sister’s best friend the way I look at you. I’m really just tired of pretending that my entire head isn’t full of you and only you.

I’m tired of pretending that my day doesn’t begin and end with thoughts of you,” he admits, his chest heaving up and down.

My heart threatens to erratically beat right out of my chest at the rush of adrenaline that comes from finally kissing the man I’ve been in love with for years.

As I adjust my body, getting comfortable in his warm embrace, I fight the urge to tell him I’d lie here with him forever. I’d count every star to infinity to stay locked in this moment with him.

The journey of learning to see my identity and my past through a new lens, through God's perspective, was the beginning of true transformation in my life... I discovered that a person misses a lot when they grow up seeing family members through the distortion of dysfunction, anger, and pain.

How different could my relationship with God have been if I had not been overcome by shame, embarrassment, and anger?

My destiny was set at the foundations of time, and nothing can stop what God has set into motion and what God has put inside me.

The story of my marriage and motherhood is not unusual: a life defined by a name, a name conferred by someone other than me. Most women I knew had taken on their husband’s name either at the time of the wedding or after the birth of their children. A few had retained their maiden name, with a handful agonizing over the decision.

One morning, I decided to type up my notes, putting them in order. I became obsessed with writing and rewriting whenever I wasn't at school or seeing Euan. I saw connections I hadn't noticed at the time, good things which happened, as well as the mistakes which were made, and I realized it was finally time to forgive myself for what happened with Hannah. For better or worse, it's my story. And I'm still here to keep telling it.

Aside from it being a shortened version of her name, she always reminded me of the sun. She brought light into my life. And for right now, even if it’s only for a brief moment, she brings a little bit of light into a darkness.

She’s always been my kryptonite, my favorite drug and sobriety was never an option.

The marigold was my own way of keeping you close to me. I know I did some things that really hurt you, and I hate that I did that, but I never stopped loving you, Goldie. Not for a single second.

I don’t fucking care how we make it happen, but soon, you’ll be in my arms again. You hear me?” I nod because I couldn’t agree more.

Dad…” I croak, knowing if I had to choose, I’d do the same thing. Making my dad proud—keeping this ranch in the family—is one of the things I want most in this world. But what I want the most, is Mare. My Goldie.

You’ve always looked at my boy like he was your entire world. And I noticed the moment he started looking at you like that, too. I love you like my own daughter, Marigold, and I know you. I know you’ve always loved him. And I know my boy loves you more than anything else in this world.

I don’t know everything that happened between the two of you. One moment you both were happy and the next moment you wouldn’t come home, and Cade shut down. I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, please know that, I’m telling you this next part because you need to know that whatever my sweet, quiet, stubborn son has done in the past, he loves you with his entire being.

Maybe you’d come back, maybe he’d laugh more, maybe you two would find each other again. But that didn’t happen. At least it hasn’t yet—until tonight. Tonight I looked in my son’s eyes, and I saw hope.

For the both of you, I hope that love can overcome anything that’s happened between the two of you. From the moment your momma died, I’ve always wanted to take care of you, Marigold. I love you like I love my own children.

Whatever you decide, I will support you. I love you. I love my son. I will be there for both of you no matter what happens. I’m proud of you. I’m proud to call you mine. All my love forever, Linda P.S. Maybe I could watch you sign the book in person when you come back to Sutten? When you come back home?

My shoulders shake as I try to take a deep breath. It’s a useless attempt, the more I try not to cry, the harder I cry. There’s so many feelings coursing through me that I don’t know what to think or how to feel. I feel guilty for never coming back to Sutten knowing what waited for me there. I feel so sad that I can’t tell Linda to her face that Cade and I have found each other again.

And then I feel clarity. Because nothing has ever been more clear in my life. Sutten has always been my home. It always will be. And no matter what living in Chicago has done for me, I don’t want to be here forever. And I can’t go another minute without being with the man I fell in love with as a teenager when he remembered my birthday and told me to make a wish. Everything falls into place. I know the ending of my book. I know what I need to do. There’s only one thing left to do.

She’s my Goldie. My sunshine. The light of my life.

I stare at her because I don’t know what to say. She’s everything I could’ve ever wanted in my life. There’s a thread that ties us together that is unexplainable, but also something so rare and precious that I’d put anything on the line to keep it—even if it meant moving wherever she wanted me to. Giving up whatever I had to in order to be with her.

I hear the man I’m in love with is building me a house with a breakfast nook I’d love to write at.” “I’ll build you ten,” I say through the emotion clogging my throat.

Our home. It’s finished. I turn to him, tears welling in my eyes. “You said there was a hold up with the flooring?” Cade shrugs, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me into his chest. “I may have told a little lie. The contractor’s guys have been working real hard to have everything completed by your birthday.

He’s my everything. My every wish. My dream come true. The only wish I could make was for things to stay like this forever.

In the same way I can always sense him, I can sense her. I can sense them. My eyes flutter shut as the wind delicately caresses my cheeks. Hi Mom. Hi Linda. In the middle of the marigolds, with Cade clinging to me, I know that Mom and Linda somehow, some way are here with us. They’re sharing the most special moment of my life with me. With both of us. Mom kept true to her promise. I may not be able to see her, but I feel her.

For a few short seconds, I remember why I gave her the nickname Goldie in the first place. Aside from it being a shortened version of her name, she always reminded me of the sun. She brought light into my life. And for right now, even if it’s only for a brief moment, she brings a little bit of light into a darkness.

That wasn’t the truth. I could pour myself into the book because it was my hurt and heartbreak in those pages. It was my anguish. It was my story. Well, our story.

When Cade brought me to this house the other day, I wasn’t ready to see it. My heart couldn’t take knowing he’d been here in Sutten building a life for himself—a life he hoped I’d be in—while I was miles and miles away believing he never loved me.

That he’d loved me all along. I’d gone so long believing I was the only one who left heartbroken after our summer together. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I left this town to avoid him because I couldn’t face him not loving me back, when all along he was here, unable to let us go. Building a house for us.

I’m happy because the only man who has ever owned my heart wants to spend forever with me.

I left her standing in that airport four years ago, and it still hurts to think about. It’s like a bruise that won’t heal, one that throbs and aches no matter how much time passes. I rub my chest, trying to soothe the pain.

I’d give anything for you to want to stay, runs through my head. I’d give anything for us to have more than just this summer.