I stumbled across a website today that quotes writers on writing. Three quotes stood out for me:

“Most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind.” –E.B. White

That’s exactly how I write. I have no idea what I’m going to say when I sit down to write. I just put words on paper as fast as I can, trying to unleash my subconscious to see what comes out of me.

“First drafts of anything are shit.” –Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway was right. A writer has to go back and revise until he’s satisfied with what he’s written.

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” –Jack London

If you wait for inspiration to start writing, you might have to wait weeks, months or even years. The first thing you have to do is sit your ass down and start writing, or write standing up like Hemingway did. Going after it with a club is just starting. If you let the words gush out, you’ll then have something to mold to your liking during the revising process.

Out of the fifty or so quotes I came across today, I picked out three that I could totally identify with and went after them with a club, typing as much about them as I could at a breakneck speed. The first draft was crap, as usual, and then I started revising those ramblings.

So don’t say to yourself, “I’ll wait till tomorrow to start writing my story, poem, novel, article, essay, play or speech.” Tomorrow might never come. Start now. Write now!

I have a mantra that goes, “Write, Revise, Advertise and Exercise.” Write means to write in my journal or create a story. Revise—to rework an essay, story or novel. Advertise—to get the word out about my website and my latest book Write Now! Exercise—to move my muscles and keep my blood flowing so I won’t be a burden to anyone in old age.

Just the other day a story idea came to me about a 97-year-old man who found out, at the age of 67, the secret to a long, happy life:

Our man is sitting in a YMCA sauna in San Francisco when an old man of 80 named Avram, a man who emigrated from Russia, a man who looks like Buddha because of his bald head and huge bulging stomach, says, “How are you feeling today, my friend?”

“I’ve just gotten over a very bad cold, Avram.”

The old Russian Buddha says, “Whenever I feel weakness or sickness coming to me, I drink a magic elixir. It cure me of all ills.”

Our 67-year-old man is intrigued. “What is this magic elixir you’re talking about?”

“Hot pepper and wodka,” says Avram in his thick Russian accent.

“Did you say hot pepper and water?”

“No, no—I say wodka…wodka.”

“You mean vodka?”

“Yes, yes—wodka. You cut up hot pepper and let it soak in bottle of wodka. You live a long, healthy life if you drink this when not feeling well. It work just like a magic elixir.”

As the years roll by, whenever our man starts feeling weak or sick, he goes to the refrigerator and takes out a bottle of vodka with pieces of hot pepper marinating in it. He pours himself a shot of this magic elixir. It stings when he swallows it, but at the same time he feels it warming his insides and killing any germs it comes in contact with.

Thirty years have passed. Our man is now celebrating his 97th birthday with his entire family. During the festivities, he goes to the refrigerator and pours himself a shot of the magic elixir. Since finding out the secret to a long, healthy life, it’s become a ritual for him on each of his birthdays to toast his long gone Russian friend. He pictures the old Russian sitting in the sauna and a smile comes to his face. He raises his shot glass and says, “Thank you, Avram, for the wonderful advice you gave me,” and he downs the magic elixir. All of a sudden our man collapses and dies—strong and happy to the very end.

For this 67-year-old man, this writer, it’s important for me to “Write, Revise, Advertise and Exercise.” My mantra, like the magic elixir, gives me strength to live and to write.

I saw a movie on TV the other night–Ask the Dust, starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek–about a young writer in early 1930s Los Angeles, the city where I grew up. The writer, Colin Farrell, received a check of $250 for a story he submitted to H.L. Mencken, the editor of American Mercury Magazine. Included with the check was a letter from Mencken advising Farrell that it was a writer’s duty to keep working at his craft for many hours each day. Mencken also mentioned that a writer has a duty to experience life if he is to write about life. That’s the dilemma this writer is always facing: whether to write or experience life.

There have been many times I’ve looked out the window of my study and said to myself, “It sure would be nice to get outside on a beautiful day like this.” Oh, I’ve played hooky a number of times over the years, but most of the time I do what writers do, and that is to sit at my desk and work on a story or novel, write in my journal, post something on my website, send my work out to magazines or compose a query letter to an agent.

Today I broke away from my desk to be with my longtime friend and fellow writer Gale Kaplan. Gale is a humorous and eccentric writer who was stricken with multiple sclerosis fifteen years ago.

Before I crossed over the Bay Bridge into Oakland to visit with her, I received an e-mail from another agent in New York who wanted to read the first five chapters of my other unpublished novel,Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey. I had queried this agent a year ago about A Class of Leaders of which he asked to read the first five chapters. Although he turned it down, he said some positive things about the plot and my writing style. In the query letter I sent him for Highway Sailor, I quoted his feedback. It can only help to include something personal to an agent in a query letter.

In one week two agents have responded favorably to all the queries I’ve sent out this month. That, for me, is unusual when it comes to getting the attention of those almost impenetrable gatekeepers of the publishing world.

But back to experiencing life with Gale Kaplan. We sat in her apartment for an hour, bouncing our latest ideas off one another. She would like to make a movie of her life as a writer with multiple sclerosis. I told her about my project of writing a piece once a week for a whole year on the writing process. Afterwards we went to a restaurant she frequents. On the menu was “The Dagwood,” a triple-decker sandwich made famous by Dagwood Bumstead, a character in theBlondie comic strip who is always eating multi-layered sandwiches made up of different cheeses and meats and condiments late at night. I ordered “The Dagwood,” and when it came I thoroughly enjoyed it. Following lunch, Gale and I drove up to the Oakland hills and took in a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the Pacific Ocean and the Bay Bridge. We then sailed down into Oakland and went to her favorite coffeehouse. We sat at separate tables, she to revise one of her quirky essays and me to write in my journal.

I killed two birds with one stone today: I got out into the world to experience life and I wrote in my journal. A writer couldn’t ask for more than that, except to be published.

I looked at my e-mail today and found that a literary agent in New York is interested in reading a hundred pages of a novel I finished revising for the umpteenth time a few months ago. It’s a novel about a high school history teacher who throws the book away and lets his students teach. Although A Class of Leaders has been rejected many times over the years, I haven’t given up on it because I still think it has great merit. I’ve been querying agents every day during this month of February.(Forget December and January, in the publishing business it’s their vacation time.)

I spent most of the day printing and proofreading the hundred pages of A Class of Leaders. I double-checked everything before sending it out because I wanted to make as good an impression as possible.

If a writer gets rejected, he should keep on sending his work out again and again. If he persists, every once in a while he’ll receive a letter or e-mail with these words: “Send me a hundred pages of your novel.” That’s all a writer needs to keep plugging away at his craft.

For the past few months I’ve been experiencing a dry spell in my writing because I’ve been busy promoting my latest book Write Now! On the Road to Getting Published or How I Learned to Sell My Book. I’ve also been sending out query letters by snail mail and e-mail to a host of agents trying to convince them to read two unpublished novels of mine. Add to that, I’ve been watching the most exciting basketball team I’ve ever seen–the Golden State Warriors. Instead of sitting at my desk creating new material, I’ve been watching the Warriors on TV. What it all boils down to is I haven’t been writing. It’s time to start again.

My stepson Sol Sender owns a graphic design company in Chicago. His claim to fame, so far, is that he and two others in his company created Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign logo of a rising sun over an American landscape. I mention Sol because I received an e-mail from him yesterday. He said he finished reading Write Now! and suggested I start posting my thoughts about writing on my website. He said it would not only help writers, but that it would also help me get noticed in the writing community. “If you write something about writing each week for a whole year,” he wrote, “there’s a good chance you’ll attract people to your site.”

What a brilliant idea! If I write about writing and the writing process, it will get me out of this dry spell I’m in. Not only that, it will give me something to sink my teeth into. It will give me a goal to strive for. It will give meaning to my existence as a writer.

My good friend Heidi Hornberger once told me something about the creative process that has always stuck with me. “Start anywhere,” she said, “then take it one step at a time.”

Well, I’ve started. From here on out, once a week for the next 51 weeks, I’ll be taking it one step at a time trying to make sense out of being a writer.