Thank you so much everyone from TED, and Chris and Amy in particular.
I cannot believe I'm here.
I have not slept in weeks.
Neil and I were sitting there comparing how little we've slept
in anticipation for this. I've never been so nervous --
and I do this when I'm nervous, I just realized. (Laughter)
So, I'm going to talk about sort of what we did at this organization
called 826 Valencia, and then I'm going to talk
about how we all might join in and do similar things.
Back in about 2000, I was living in Brooklyn,
I was trying to finish my first book,
I was wandering around dazed every day
because I wrote from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m.
So I would walk around in a daze during the day.
I had no mental acuity to speak of during the day, but I had flexible hours.
In the Brooklyn neighborhood that I lived in, Park Slope,
there are a lot of writers --
it's like a very high per capita ratio
of writers to normal people.
Meanwhile, I had grown up around a lot of teachers.
My mom was a teacher, my sister became a teacher