I’m going to take a ramble into the crevices of my mind to see what comes out of me.  Here I go:

I’m sitting in a coffeehouse, located across the street from the San Francisco Zoo and three blocks from the blue Pacific. It’s almost 6 p.m., which means I’ll arrive home later than I want to, but I swore I wouldn’t let my pen stop until I finished writing at least two pages.

I just got over a very bad cold. I was sick for a whole week. It just hung on and on and wouldn’t go away. Today’s my first day out of the house.

When we’re sick, all we wish for is to gain our health and strength back. But as soon as we get better we forget how lucky and blessed we are to have our health and strength.

Writing as fast as I can in my journal is so important to me. It tells me what’s going on in my mind and many times, as a bonus, it generates a story or essay idea. That’s why I love speedwriting.

I read an interesting article today in the San Francisco Chronicle by sports columnist Scott Ostler. Ostler actually admitted, like I do every so often in these weekly pieces, that his well for column ideas was as “dry as a good martini.” To overcome his dry, empty well, he wrote whatever came to mind today, whether it was connected to sports or not. In other words, he was releasing his subconscious, which was a pleasure for me to read since I espouse such a philosophy.

There’s a hell of a lot of noise going on in here. A few people are talking on their cell phones, not in low, muffled tones, but in very high voices, as people tend to do on cell phones.

I have a cup of coffee in my left hand and my unstoppable pen in my right. All of a sudden I can’t wait to finish this piece because of the loud chatter going on around me. Noise is a great distraction to this writer. But I’m not going to let it deter me from finishing two pages.

I’m reminded of Larry David in one of his Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes. He was sitting alone in a restaurant while a man at the next table, also alone, was talking loudly on his cell phone, just like the three people around me are doing. What did Larry do? He struck up a conversation with an invisible person across the table from him, talking as loud as the guy next to him. So the guy on his cell stops talking and complains to Larry that he can’t hear the person he’s talking to. The nerve of the guy! That’s what I feel like doing now, talking in a loud voice to an invisible person across the table from me—except I’m not a comedian with a TV series.

You, out there, why don’t you try writing as fast as you can? It might do you some good to find out what’s stored in the crevices of your mind.

“I was intrigued with the whole concept of the democratic classroom in A Class of Leaders and how Joseph Sutton brought it to life. I was thoroughly impressed with the way he captured the dialogue and attitudes of the African-American students of the late 1960s. I don’t think any writer, black or white, has ever done it better.” —Bernie Schneider, author of The Glory That Was Theirs

Today is Tuesday. I really don’t feel like writing because I have a headache, sore throat, a bad cough and I’m weak. Here’s a conversation I had with myself before I sat down at my desk today:

“Should I write or not? I’m really not up to it. What I want to do is get in bed and sleep. No one is going to miss what I have to say, so why not take a day off and think of my health? On the other hand, I promised myself in early February that I would write an essay each week for a whole year and post it on my website. I have to keep to my word.”

If a writer is sicker than a dog, should he or she take a day off and go to bed?

Well, as you can see, a writer should NOT take a day off from writing. I learned this from William Saroyan and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom wrote every day no matter how sick or hungover they were. And so that’s what I’m doing, feeling like a dirty rag, but still writing.

You can be sure, though, that as soon as I finish this piece, I’m going straight to bed with the hope of regaining my health as soon as possible.

It may have taken him over 40 years to get his book published, but San Francisco author Joseph Sutton is proud and excited about his latest novel A Class of Leaders. Set in 1969 at a black ghetto high school in South Central Los Angeles, the names have been changed but the words of the students are taken from Sutton’s real life experience as a teacher.

“I was 29 in 1969,” said Sutton. “I was single, young and idealistic. So much was happening back then: drugs, the sexual revolution, Black Power, the Vietnam war…it was a very turbulent time in our nation’s history and I got caught up in it as a teacher.”

The novel is written with actual student comments taken from an “Ideas and Complaints” box that Joshua Sampson, the teacher-character in the novel, has set on his desk. “I really had an ‘Ideas and Complaints’ box for the students to freely express themselves,” said Sutton. “Each day they would write down what they thought about the subjects we discussed in class. The comments concerned the powerful social and cultural changes that were taking place as seen through the eyes of African-American students.”

When asked why it took so long for A Class of Leaders to get published, Sutton answered, “I kept sending it out and it kept getting rejection after rejection. I also kept revising it over the years—at least a dozen times. I always thought it deserved publication and never gave up on it. Finally, after forty years, it found a publisher.” —Jonathan Farrell, Sunset Beacon

“I couldn’t put A Class of Leaders down. Joseph Sutton’s novel is a captivating read with fascinating insights and interesting subplots.” —Ray Balbes, fine artist