BE:This is a highly self-reflective piece that was admittedly, to some extent, a cathartic exercise. How does catharsis play into your writing process at large, and do you think it’s a necessary component/bi-product?

CF: All writing is cathartic in a certain sense. It really did help me while I was in the thick of it to think about how I would someday be able to use all this in my writing. I don’t know that I fully agree with the old “write what you know” adage, but I do think that any writer who doesn’t draw from their experiences is crazy. Life just hands you free material on a daily basis, and you have to hold onto that and save it for a later date. Those experiences—good and bad—stay in your back pocket, messing up your posture every time you sit down. But when you finally get a chance to use something in your writing, you can stop carrying it around with you. The act of writing is a cathartic release, sometimes of big things and sometimes of a couple of little things, depending on what you pull out and use.