I write because I care about the characters I see in my head, care to follow them to their true endings, despite my misgivings about myself, my own ignorance and inabilities, my own vague stabs at trying to limn their paths with the dim light of my imagination. Even in the midst of these falterings - and perhaps in a way because of them - I care, and in this caring find that available joy, writing. And in the surrendering of myself to those characters and by extension to that care, I have found it easier to give up the cares that lead nowhere: the debris of the publishing world and all its attendant miseries and triumphs of the ego.

Bret Lott, Before We Get Started

As a student of creative nonfiction, I wrote underneath this, “Can one - can I - care about myself as a character in this same way?”