There is a widely circulated and widely-attributed quote about writing, that it's "...easy, just open a vein and bleed." Kyell Gold has popularized the quote among furry writers but it's much older, going back probably to the late 1920s or so.

One of the problems with "One Could Do Better" in its original form was that it was honest in some ways, but in others it held back and in still other ways it was blind to things that I've only recently worked out about my experience in London. The original draft had the benefit of only five years of hindsight, and the second draft was better with seven years of hindsight.

Now, with "District Line," I'm doing more than just revising an old text: I'm reinventing it.

I have more than a decade under the bridge, and along with the very real pain of my waning hopes of ever setting foot in England again I have a great deal more insight into how my struggles with things like gender identity figure into the whole picture. I'm also further obscuring the boundaries between which parts are true and which parts are fiction to the extent that some parts that seem too fantastic to believe are true, and some parts that seem entirely plausible are not. By calling it a work of fiction I am protected somewhat from the scrutiny of having to tell my readers which is which and I like it that way, because I'm not in the habit of easily giving away just how mad I really am.

This is what writing is all about though. It's all about veiling your most shocking confessions in a charming little anecdote. It's all about blurring the lines between fact and fiction. It's all about being honest where it counts: emotionally. Give them something they can have a field day psychoanalyzing. Don't hide how insane you really are. If you hold back, they can tell because there will be nothing on the page but ink. Give them blood, give them your emotional DNA and cut as deep as you dare into your own psyche.