I spent a great deal of time revising “Week 36—The Complete Story.” I wanted you, the reader, to understand exactly what I was trying to convey. It was a complex piece that I needed to make as clear, as interesting and as true as possible. So I revised, revised and kept revising until I was almost completely satisfied with what I had written. I don’t know if I’ll ever be 100% satisfied with that piece.

In the beginning of my writing career, a friend of mine told me, “Write with fire, revise with flame.” The “fire” part of “The Complete Story” took less than thirty minutes to write. The “flame” part took countless hours.

Below are ten quotes by writers on the subject of revision. I chose these quotes because they rang true for me. Maybe they’ll ring true for you.

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.” —Robert Cormier

“In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don’t enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.” —Rita Dove

“The first draft reveals the art, revision reveals the artist.” —Michael Lee

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” —Bernard Malamud

“Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.” —Richard North Patterson

“I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov

“Everything comes out wrong with me at first, but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it until it offends me no more.” —William James

“This morning I took out a comma, and this afternoon I put it back again.” —Oscar Wilde

“Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.” —Pete Murphy

“To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.” —John Hersey

There are many reasons why writers write. Anger, Revenge, Happiness, Depression, Redemption, Synchronicity, Discovery, Beauty, to Inform, to Inspire, to Entertain…and the list can go on and on why writers write.

As an autobiographical writer, I don’t know the complete story until a character I’ve written about fills me in on his or her side of the story. Many years ago I wrote a chapter in a published novel about my “almost” first sexual experience at the age of 17. I recently met that woman who “almost” gave herself to me. After she read the chapter about the two of us, she filled me in on something that completely blew my mind. It was an extremely important aspect that never entered my thought processes. It was a revelation to me. What I’m getting at is: Revelation is another reason why writers write. Here then is the complete story:

As soon as the senior prom was over, Penny and I drove up to the Hollywood hills. We were parked in an empty lot, the shimmering lights of Los Angeles below us. We were in the front seat of my mother’s Plymouth. Soon she was sitting on my lap, facing me, kissing me passionately and rubbing my lower region with her hand. And there I was, caressing her breasts, something I had never been able to do with a girl in all my years. There was no doubt we were on the brink of coitus—when all of a sudden, interruptus: two flashlights were shining through my car’s steamed-up windows that scared the holy hell out of us.

I wrote a chapter about this incident in my novel Morning Pages and called it “My Almost First Woman.” Last month, at Fairfax High School’s 50-year class reunion, I brought several copies of the novel as a donation for door prizes. When I saw Penny (who really hadn’t changed much in all those years), I gave her a copy of the book and pointed out the chapter I had written about the two of us. I wanted her to know how special that senior prom night was to me. In a letter I received from her a few days ago, she said she “flushed” when she read the chapter, then startled me with a confession.

Penny revealed that she and a guy by the name of Ronnie Separsky had set me up. According to their plan, Separsky was to shoot his mouth off to me in civics class about his sexual exploits with her. He started this “bragging” a few weeks before the senior prom was to take place. He was letting me know how easy Penny would be so that when she asked me to the prom I would not hesitate in accepting her invitation. In her letter, Penny explained that Separsky was only her friend and dancing partner, that she had never had sex with him or anyone else in high school. She admitted that she had had a longtime crush on me and figured that their scheme was the only way she could get me to go out with her. I must say it was pretty ingenious plot on their part.

When she asked me to the prom, I of course accepted. What teenage boy who had never gotten to second base with someone of the opposite sex would turn down an invitation from a girl who was not only attractive but who, according to Separsky, was “hot to trot”?

But all of Penny’s and Separsky’s conspiring, all of her pre-prom fantasies and mine, were foiled by two flashlight-wielding cops whose duty, I remember them saying, was to warn “lover’s lane” couples of potential robbers and rapists.

In her letter, Penny divulged that she would have kept up with what we were about to do in my mother’s car if we had gone out again. But like the unthinking, unaware fool that I was back then, I never did call and ask her out.

Over the years I’ve often thought of that prom night and wondered, “What if those cops hadn’t interrupted us?” A couple of scenarios crossed my mind. Penny and I might have started dating, maybe even gotten married, had kids and eventually divorced. The second scenario was, what if she had gotten pregnant the night of the prom? In those days when abortion was prohibited in the United States, we might have driven 130 miles to Tijuana and walked into a sleazy abortion clinic where she might have hemorrhaged and possibly died.

Now that I think of it, maybe those cops really saved us a whole lot of trouble.

Many writers have asked me, “What should I do if I have to write something, or feel like writing something, but don’t know what to say?”

My answer to them is, “An idea will eventually come to you if you keep on writing.”

Julia Cameron, a woman who makes you want to write if you read her many books on writing, says, “It is the act of writing that calls ideas forward, not ideas that call forward writing.”

If you have a deadline to meet or an inclination to write but don’t know what to say, should you think before you write or write before you think?

I say, “Don’t think, but keep on writing until an idea comes to mind.”

Let me give you an example. Many times, since I began this project, I’ve said to myself (and I’ll probably say it again), “What am I going to write about today?” What I do is sit down to write and invariably, if I keep on writing without thinking, an idea will float to the surface. If I try to think about what I want to write, most of the time nothing materializes.

So, if you don’t have an idea to write about, keep on writing without thinking. I swear you’ll come up with an idea.

While teaching at Fremont High School in South Los Angeles, I wrote in my journal, every day, for four months, and used those notes to produce a novel about a white teacher in a black ghetto high school. I called the book A Class of Leaders.

When I was a young writer living in Berkeley, my girlfriend and I broke up after living together for four years. Soon after the split, I witnessed the death of my father in Los Angeles. To overcome those two losses, I decided to hit the highways of America in my VW bus. I wrote in my journal, every day, on that three-month journey. After I settled down in Portland, Oregon, I used my journal entries to write my second novel, Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey.

For my third novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, about a writer overcoming writer’s block, I wrote in my journal, every day, for three months. Again, I used my daily journal entries to write that novel.

Do you see a pattern of how those novels came into being? I wrote in my journal, every day, for three or four months.

I’m not saying you should follow my pattern. What I’m saying is, if you write in your journal, every day, for a month or two or three, it’s one way to get a writing project off the ground. At the very least you’ll have plenty of material to work with.

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.

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.

My cousin Ben called me a few days ago. “Joe,” he said, “I’ve read everything you’ve written about writing on your website. What you’re really doing is writing for writers. Why don’t you write something for us non-writers. You know, sometimes we want to write down our ideas but hold back because we didn’t go to college or because we don’t know grammar or how to spell. What kind of advice can you give us non-writers?”

If what I’m about to say makes any sense to non-writers, or even writers, then try these “Seven Pieces of Writing Advice” that my cousin Ben inspired me to put together:

(1) If you write with a pen or pencil, buy yourself an 8 1/2” x 11” spiral notebook. If you prefer to write on a computer, open up a New Folder on your desktop and call it “My Journal.”

(2) Use your spiral notebook or “My Journal” folder to write down your thoughts, feelings, stories, poems, ideas or anything else you can think of.

(3) Write down the day and date before each entry. Now, start writing—anything. If you know what to write, great. If you don’t know what to write, write whatever comes to mind.

(4) Write for at least ten minutes without stopping. Don’t look back to see what you’ve written until the ten minutes or more are up.

(5) If your spelling, grammar or punctuation is all jumbled, that’s all right. The important thing is, you’ve written something rather than nothing. Remember, you can always go back and revise.

(6) For the first week, write for at least ten minutes every day.

(7) For the second, third and fourth weeks, write for at least fifteen minutes every day. After a month you will have written a great deal and gotten the writing bug.

Keep writing and good luck!

There’s a quote taped to my desktop computer that’s staring me in the face this very second. It comes from a writer who’s influenced me more than any other writer—William Saroyan. Speaking of which, there was a front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle last week about the 100th anniversary celebration of Saroyan’s birth that was going to take place at the Palace of Fine Arts here in San Francisco, the city where Saroyan made his mark on the world with his short story “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” I called to see if I could attend the event but was told it was sold out, which saddened me. I was extremely happy, though, to know that Saroyan is still remembered and has a following. Here’s the quote that I personally got from him when I accidentally ran into him at a corner grocery store in San Francisco many years ago: “All writing is connected to writing.”

What does Saroyan’s quote mean? It means that anything you write—an e-mail, journal entry, story, plus everything from a Twitter tweet to a novel—is part of the writing process. But if you only think about writing and don’t write (believe me, I’m speaking from first-hand experience), that’s not writing, that’s procrastinating.

So, to all of you procrastinators out there, get on the ball, find a place to sit down and begin writing. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar. Start writing before you rot.

Which instrument is best for writing a first draft—the pen or the computer?

The pen, for me, is a little more physical, visceral, tangible, tactile. I believe I can dig deeper into my mind and explain myself better with a pen. Plus, I can jot down notes with a pen anywhere and at anytime.

On the other hand, writing on a computer is a great timesaver. I can write twice as fast on a keyboard than I can with a pen. Cutting and pasting on a computer is another great timesaver. Also, I don’t have to transcribe my handwritten work onto the computer—it’s already there.

I remember when Michael Phelps won one of his eight gold medals in swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympics by the length of a fingernail. That’s how much a pen wins out over a computer for me—by a fingernail.

Of course, it’s up to each individual to make up his or her mind whether to write a first draft using a pen or computer.

Is there a secret to writing?

“Yes, of course there is.”

What is it?

“It can be summed up in four little words.”

You’re kidding me. How can you sum up the secret to writing in four words?

“Then you tell me what the secret is?”

I can’t. I just thought it would be longer than four words. Tell me, what’s the secret?

“SIT DOWN AND WRITE.”

Is that it? Are you being serious with me?

“I’ve never been more serious. Think about it. If you want to write, have to write, need to write, what do you do? Do you go for a walk, wash the dishes or call someone on the phone? No. You can’t do those things if you want to write. What you have to do is actually SIT DOWN AND WRITE. It’s as simple as that. Or, if you’re so inclined, STAND UP AND WRITE. The choice is up to you.”

What does the writing process mean to you?

“It means you shouldn’t be afraid of your internal voice.”

What do you mean by that?

“What I mean is, trust yourself, trust your voice. Don’t even try pleasing others—please yourself, first and foremost.”

Do you have more thoughts on the writing process?

“Yes.  I believe writing is freedom from criticism.”

Can you elaborate on that?

“Don’t worry what others think of your writing. If you worry what they think it will prevent you from expressing yourself freely. It’s like having an editor peering over your shoulder as you’re writing, telling you that a word doesn’t belong here, that you need a comma there, that your thoughts and feelings don’t deserve the light of day. The editor is your nemesis. You have to get rid of the editor if you want to free yourself of criticism.”

How do I get rid of the editor?

“As you write, don’t look back. If you write without looking back, even if you think you’re making a fool of yourself, or making a bunch of spelling, punctuation and grammar errors, don’t worry about it, keep going forward until you’re finished with what you want to say. After you’re finished, that’s when you should go back and start utilizing your editor.”

Wait a minute. First you tell me to get rid of this nemesis, the editor, and now you tell me to make use of it. I don’t understand.

“After you’ve freely written everything you want, you’ll need to revise, shape and mold what you’ve written. Revision is when it’s time to utilize your editor. Let me give you an example. A young man recently e-mailed me a short paragraph of his writing that was complete gobbledygook. He said he wrote it down as fast as he could and asked, ‘Is this what you mean by stream of consciousness writing?’ I wrote back saying, ‘Write more. The more you write, the more sense you’ll make, and then revise your piece if you want people to understand what you’ve written.’ It was fine that he wrote down what came quickly to his mind, but he should have written more and then utilized his editor.”

Are you saying my editor only does harm during the first draft of a work by making me hesitate or sputter along?

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

And then I should use the editor to organize and revise?

“Yes.”

I have one more question:  Who are you?

“Me?  I’m your internal voice speaking to you.”

I know that most writers have to work at another job to survive in this world, which leaves them little time and energy to write. I’m one of the extremely fortunate ones who has the time and energy to write. So let me fill you in on a typical day in this writer’s life:

I wake up around 7:30 and make my breakfast while my wife Joan is busy studying Latin or ancient Greek at the kitchen table. While eating and sipping coffee, I’m simultaneously reading the morning paper and listening to the news on the radio.

At 9:15, it’s time for me to drive to the YMCA for my 9:45 water aerobics class (a.k.a. deep water running). I attend this class four days a week. (In the old days, before my right knee and two hips started bothering me, I’d go for a brisk walk down by the ocean six or seven days a week.  I still walk, but only a couple of days a week now.) After a vigorous one-hour workout in the pool and a relaxing twenty minutes in the dry sauna, I take a shower. While dressing, there’s always someone in the locker room to shoot the breeze with about politics, economics, sports, movies, religion or the state of our health. It’s the only time of the day when I get a chance to socialize. Along with exercise and proper diet, I believe social interaction is a large part of a human being’s well-being.

After getting home from the Y at noon, I put a lunch together.

Around one o’clock, I get to my desk. For several hours that seem to go by too swiftly, I’m doing something related to writing. I’m either writing in my journal to chronicle my past or present life, or I’m writing in my journal as fast as I can to get an idea to write about. If an idea, such as a story, chapter, essay or poem, hits me, I’ll write like the wind to get it all down. Then comes the inevitable revising, which can take hours, days or even weeks. Included in all this is sending query letters to agents, sending my short works to magazines or posting something on my website.

Come seven o’clock, it’s eating dinner with Joan.

Around eight o’clock, I’ll unwind for a while by watching the news or a sporting event on TV. I’ll return to my desk around ten o’clock to either revise whatever I was working on or check the many e-mails I receive and answer those that warrant a reply.

When 11:30 rolls around, it’s zzzzz time.

Since I became a writer 40 years ago, I’ve had to dish out a lot more money than I’ve taken in, what with postage, paper, print cartridges, paying for editors, publicity and travel expenses. I would be a millionaire today if I made a dollar for every hour I’ve spent writing my novels, short stories, essays and poems. But I’m still happy I chose to be a writer. I feel like the great New York Yankee first baseman, Lou Gehrig, who said to an overflow crowd at Yankee Stadium on the day of his retirement in 1939, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Although I write about writing, I refuse to tell people how to write or what to write. All I can do is try to inspire them to write and give them a picture of what the writing process is all about.

“Tell me,” you might ask, “what is the writing process all about?”

The process, simply stated, is: If you know what you want to write, write it. If you have a desire to write but don’t know what to say, then write anything that comes to mind without stopping. Do it for five, ten, thirty minutes or an hour.

As for me, I love to write when I don’t know what to write. I feel freer than a bird when that happens. I can soar, glide, swoop, dive, imagine, feel, think, go back in time, peer into the future or vent my anger. No one is telling me what to do. I’m free. I’m a writer. That’s why I consider myself the luckiest writer on the face of the earth.

Sometimes I say to myself, “I want to write about the writing process except I don’t know what to say. I’m lost. Here I am trying to inspire others to write and I can’t think of anything to write. What’s wrong with me?”

This is what is known as a case of writer’s block: a thick concrete block that stands a hundred feet high and extends miles to the right and left. You can’t go through it, over it or around it. “What am I to do?” I ask myself. “I’m stone-cold blank.”

So I start at the beginning by sitting down and reaching for a pen or turning on the computer.

But before I start writing, a question arises: “Should I force myself to write about the writing process or should I write whatever comes to mind?”

And I answer myself by saying, “If I have to force myself to write on a certain subject, forget it. What I’ll do is write whatever comes to mind. If something about the writing process turns up, I’ll keep writing about it.”

Uh-oh, but here comes the writer’s nemesis, the editor, who says, “You can’t write what comes to mind, it won’t make sense. There are certain rules to follow in writing. One of them is that you must plan ahead by making an outline. And then you must think of a topic sentence to get started on the right track.”

I say baloney to anything that prevents a writer from writing. I can write anything I want—and so can you. We have to tear ourselves away from that editor hovering over us. We have to wipe that constricting figure from our minds, take a deep breath and write the first thing that comes to mind—and to keep on writing.

It’s hard for a writer to bust through, climb over or go around that concrete slab known as writer’s block. To conquer that block, we have to symbolically dig under it by clawing and scratching our way into our subconscious, forgetting about outlines and topic sentences, forgetting about spelling, punctuation, grammar and all the other rules of writing and just letting ‘er rip.

Sometimes a story idea pops into a writer’s mind while writing. Sometimes it comes from out of the blue in real life. Here’s what happened to me just twenty minutes ago.

As I was walking along the Great Highway path next to the ocean, I saw a man enter the path carrying one of those iron bars that lock a car’s steering wheel in place. “Why would he be carrying something like that?” I asked myself.

Ten seconds later my question was answered: a man on his bike stopped, got off and faced the man with the iron bar. I stood about 10 yards from them.

The man with the iron bar raised it above his head.

“What the hell are you doing?!” said the guy with the bike. “This is San Francisco, we don’t do things like that.”

The man lowered the iron bar. “I didn’t like what you said to me.”

“You almost ran me over,” said the bike guy. “What did you expect me to say, you stupid ass?”

The man lifted the iron bar above his head again. “Hey,“ I shouted, “stop that!“ He turned toward me, shaking, and dropped the bar. Then, getting into a boxer’s stance, he said to the bike guy, “Put ‘em up!”

“I don’t want to fight you!”

“You swore and yelled at me, man! You just called me a stupid ass! Come on, put ‘em up!”

Since the man didn’t have an iron bar in his hand, I stepped closer to them and asked, “What’s going on around here?”

Each man told me his story. The car guy said he didn’t see the bike guy and made a mistake by almost hitting him, but he didn’t like the way the bike guy got mad at him. The bike guy said he was riding down the street when the car guy made a turn and almost ran over him. He stopped, swore at the car guy, then rode off.

I thought the bike guy’s reaction was normal and that the car guy took what happened much too seriously. I thought things had cooled down a bit, but the car guy started raising his voice again. The bike guy responded in kind. All the bike guy had to do was stop defending himself in front of a semi-crazed macho man who wasn’t about to listen to anyone. I looked at the bike guy and said, “Don’t argue with him, you’re only making things worse.” Thank goodness he listened to me, and this had a calming effect on the car guy.

The car guy picked up the iron bar and started for his car. The bike guy got on his bike and rode away. As for me, I rushed home to write a story that came from out of the blue.

Where does a writer get material to write about? I can’t speak for other writers, I can only speak for myself. I get my material from my ongoing journal of 40 years that I’m writing in at this very moment.

Most of the time when I start a journal entry I have no idea what I’m going to say. I might begin writing about the weather or how I feel or what’s going on in the world or what’s going on outside my window. Just by putting words on paper or my computer screen, an idea or incident might enter my thoughts. If I think I can make something meaningful out of that idea or incident, I’ll write as much about it as swiftly as I can before I go back and do the rewriting. Today is a rare day for me. I don’t have to stumble across something to write, I know exactly what I want to write: about a humiliating incident that took place last night at AT&T Park where the San Francisco Giants play baseball. I always treasure writing about meaningful incidents, even those that reveal my flaws.

My wife Joan and I weren’t at the ballpark for a baseball game, we were there to watch the Donizetti opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. It was San Francisco Opera’s twice-a-year presentation of “Opera at the Ballpark,” where all of San Francisco is invited to watch a live simulcast from the War Memorial Opera House on the ballpark’s jumbo scoreboard–for free.

After Joan and I got off the streetcar, we came upon a line that was three blocks long. We went to the head of the line and found that only one entrance was open and only one security guard was checking bags. It was the height of poor planning, which meant we were in for a long, long wait.

I wanted to kind of melt into the front of the line, but Joan was totally against it. “That’s not being fair to the people standing in line,” she berated me.

“I’m only trying to get us in before the opera starts. You don’t want to stand out here longer than an hour, do you?”

“It’s not right,” she said. “It’s rude. I’m going to the back of the line. You do what you want.”

I followed Joan to the back of the line because it was The Right Thing To Do. For ten minutes we barely inched along. All of a sudden the dam broke and within a few minutes we were inside the ballpark. The one and only security guard had stopped checking bags so that everyone could get in on time to see the beginning of the opera.

As it turned out, the two of us, along with 25,000 others, had a grand time watching the opera on the giant ballpark screen.

A lot of beginning writers wonder if they’ll ever discover their “voice.” I surely thought the same when I began my writing career. “Will I ever find my writing voice?” I asked myself. “All the great writers have it. I wonder how they got it?”

As I was taking a streetcar downtown last night, it occurred to me that what I was observing was different from everyone else’s observation on the streetcar. I’ve known about seeing things from a different perspective since I was a young boy, but somehow it really sunk in last night.

From where I was sitting, I could see what was going on in front of me. But a person sitting in the opposite direction or sitting across from me or standing up was observing a different scene altogether.

It struck me that we humans see only a part of what’s going on (a part of reality, a part of the truth), we never see ALL of what’s going on. Because of our varied experiences, because of where we sit, stand, live, who we know, how we were brought up, what we read, because of all these factors and many, many more, we can’t help but see things differently than other people.

What does this mean for beginning writers? It means that every human being is unique, and if a beginning writer is willing to write what he observes, thinks, feels, imagines, a distinct voice will emerge onto the page. So don’t worry about discovering your own voice–it’s already there. All you need is the willpower to write, to keep on writing and publish it for the world to read.

I’m a great lover of quotations. I once compiled a book of quotations on all aspects of health and called it Words of Wellness: A Treasury of Quotations for Well-Being. It was published in 1991, before the Internet and search engines burst onto the world scene. Today a person can find any type of quotation on the Internet within seconds. I sometimes browse the Internet to see what other writers have said about writing. Today I found six quotes that coincided perfectly with my thoughts. The seventh and final quote is the only one I didn’t find today, I came across it many years ago.

“Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don’t try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there’s a chance you’ll never get past the first chapter.” –Iain Banks

“How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how:If you practice an art faithfully it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.” –William Saroyan

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in the human condition.” –Graham Greene

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”–Joan Didion

“When I finish a first draft, it’s always just as much of a mess as it’s always been.” –Michael Chabon

“The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work–especially his first full-length book–and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.” –Paul Johnson

And lastly, I came across the following quote a few decades ago. E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and co-author with William Strunk of The Elements of Style, was stuck on a story as a cub reporter for the Seattle Times in the early 1920s. He approached his editor, a Mr. Johns, and asked how he could get unstuck. Johns thought for a moment and replied, “Just say the words.”

Whenever I get bogged down trying to express a word, sentence or thought, I think of the advice given to E.B. White and, just like magic, it gets me going again.

I sometimes write as fast as I can, as I’m doing now, to see what my subconscious will let out of the cage.

I’m sitting straight in my ergonomic office chair. My desk is cluttered with papers. I have so much I want to do as a writer. I have two novels–A Class of Leaders and Highway Sailor–that I’ve been hyping to agents, unsuccessfully, so I’m seriously thinking of self-publishing both books. I have a 3000-word piece to send to different magazines that I’m calling “Hip-Op Journal: How I Became a Normal Human Being Again After Two Hip Operations.” I have a collection of short stories to revise and put in order. I have a dozen bookstores to call to see how many copies they’ve sold of my latest book Write Now! and if they need more copies. I have plenty of things to do. What amazes me is that I’m looking forward to doing all of them.

The phone is ringing, but I’m not answering it. Most of the calls are from solicitors. That’s why Joan and I let the answering machine take the calls. If it’s someone we know, we’ll pick up the phone. But while I’m doing this speedwriting, I’m not picking up for anyone, because there have already been too many distractions for me today.

“Delay is natural to a writer. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor–as though not until everything in the world is lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonable expect me to set a word down on paper.” —E.B. White

Just like E.B. White, it took me from waking up this morning to 3 p.m. to start setting words down on paper.

Is it work to write without stopping? Not at all–it’s fun. I can say anything I want. I don’t have to write an essay connected to the writing process because I’m “in” the process this very moment.

So far I’ve received nearly 150 comments from people who have visited my website and have read my pieces on writing. A fair number of them have even bought my two books on writing: Write Now! and Morning Pages. I’d say that’s pretty good feedback. It’s a sign of what the Internet can do and how much people are interested in writing.

I didn’t write about the writing process today, I let my subconscious take over. It’s exhilarating to write as fast as my fingers will go. Whoever is reading this, you should try it sometime.

My wife Joan and I are on a Southwest Airlines flight taking us from Chicago back to San Francisco. There’s a girl of six or seven and her mother sitting right behind us. The girl has an incredibly screechy loud voice. Joan hasn’t had to listen to the torture I’ve been through for the past two hours because she’s been plugged into her iPod the whole time.

There is no doubt that the young girl is in love with the sound of her own voice which happens to be the most shrill, piercing voice I’ve ever heard in my life. My ears rang every time she opened her mouth. Her voice was as ear splitting as a siren. If someone had held up an empty wine glass, she could have probably shattered it with that voice of hers. The mother was so unaware of her daughter’s penetrating voice. That voice not only infringed upon my eardrums and thoughts for two hours, but I’m sure it affected every person seated in our general area.

The mother still hasn’t told her daughter to relax and be quiet for a while. I believe she refuses to do so because she thinks she’s a caring, loving mother who is trying to make her precious and precocious little daughter forget that we’re 36,000 feet in the air on a somewhat bumpy flight. I blame her for not realizing how much her daughter’s voice is bothering others.

Oh, I turned around in my seat a couple of times to show my displeasure, but not a peep came out of me. I was actually too shy to intrude upon their intrusiveness. I’m usually the first person to speak up when unthinking people are oblivious to others. I was hoping another passenger would say something–except no one did. I thought of asking the flight attendant to tell them to be quiet–but I didn’t. It just shows how extremely tolerant people are of children on planes. An idea even occurred to me to tell the mother that her daughter’s voice carried so well that I thought she had a great future as an opera singer.

So how am I able to write with those two chatterboxes still going non-stop behind me? Earplugs! I couldn’t think straight until Joan dug into her purse and handed me a pair of earplugs. I was almost on the verge of getting out of my seat and telling that mother and daughter team to “Shut up already!” Because of these earplugs, I don’t have to vent my anger on them. Instead, I’m venting it on this page, which is the only course an angry writer should take.

I once knew a poet, Sid Lyman, who was the Poet Laureate of Portland, Oregon, when I lived there for a few years. It was my honor to dub him “The Port Laureate of Poetland.” Anyway, the two of us were talking about deadlines one evening, when Sid said, “I don’t understand why people call them deadlines. The word should be lifelines.”

Sid was absolutely correct. Lifeline is surely the more appropriate word, but since deadline is so prevalent in our society today, I’ll stick to that word for now.

My favorite writer of all time, William Saroyan, always set a deadline for himself. He churned out a story a day. He wrote his famous play, The Time of Your Life, in six days. Each of his novels or memoirs was written in around thirty days. Deadlines made Saroyan an extremely prolific writer. I met him twice in my life. In our first meeting, he explained his philosophy of deadlines to me:

“I was talking to this writer and he asked me how I wrote The Time of Your Life in six days. My answer to him was, “How did you write your book in six months?’ Time is relative. If you set a deadline for yourself, then the same thing will come out in six days as it will in six months:or even six years.”

I’ve set a deadline for myself to write an essay on writing once a week for 52 weeks. When Tuesday rolls around, I know it’s time to finish a piece and post it on my website. Deadlines are a godsend–they help me keep writing. Deadlines give me life. They force me to concentrate, really concentrate, on the goal at hand. Deadlines have made me produce more stories, essays and books than I could have ever imagined. That’s why deadlines, as Sid Lyman once said, should be called lifelines.

It was hard for me to sit down and write today, but I finally got to it–around eight o’clock this evening.

First of all, I had a nine o’clock dental appointment. When I got home around eleven, a man was installing a new furnace in our basement. Joan had let him in and then left for her classes at San Francisco State University. Whenever I sat down at my desk, the furnace man would call up to interrupt my train of thought: “Can you help me lift something?” “I need you to tell me where I can make a hole in the wall.” “Can I use your bathroom?” “Do you have a broom I can use?” I couldn’t concentrate for one minute on what I had to do. So I reluctantly threw in the towel and assisted him until he completed the job. Then, after he left, because I had promised Joan, I drove to the produce market to buy some fruit and vegetables. When I got home, she was in the kitchen cooking dinner. We ate. After eating, I washed the dishes.

What is a writer to do in a world that is trying its best, day and night, to stop him from sitting down and writing? I’m talking about interruptions like phone calls, the doorbell ringing, errands, appointments, noises and chores. To overcome these obstacles, a writer has to clear his mind of everything and focus on one thing and one thing only–writing. If you don’t focus on your writing, as you can see from what happened to me today, the world will prevent you from doing what you have to do.

It’s 9:45 in the evening. I’m sitting at my computer to write about time and the writing process. I usually don’t write around this time of the day. At this hour you can usually find me checking my e-mails or watching the news on Cable, a show on HBO or a San Francisco Giants baseball game.

Why are you writing at this late hour?

“Who are you?”

It doesn’t matter who I am. Just answer my question.

“The reason I’m writing now is that I have a strong itch to write. I have something of great importance to tell all writers about the best time of the day to write.“

What’s the best time of the day to write?

“You should know the answer to that.”

If you have something to say, then say it. Don’t toy with me.

“OK, OK. I was sitting at my desk all afternoon, dawdling, dozing off at times, not knowing exactly what I wanted to say about time and the writing process, but I knew I had to write something because today is Tuesday, and I promised myself to write an essay about the writing process every Tuesday for a whole year. I was going to–”

Say it already!

“What?”

The best time of the day to write is:

“Any time of the day is the best time to write. It could be early in the morning, after lunch, after dinner, after midnight–any time is always the right time to write.”

Is that all you have to say?

“Just one more thing. Of course any time of the day is the right time to write, but I think it’s best to write around some certain time so you can get a rhythm or habit going.”

Writing has made me walk and walking has made me write. When I quit the teaching profession at the age of 29 to become a writer, it never occurred to me that I would also become a walker. Every day, while working on my first novel, I went outside to go for a walk. Taking a walk came as natural to me as eating and sleeping.

Nothing beats a walk. It’s a great exercise, whether you walk slowly or briskly. As an extra bonus, walking leaves a writer free to take in the flowers, the sky, the clouds, the air and colors. Best of all, though, you can think and ponder and come up with ideas while walking.

[I'm stopping right here. Writing about walking has made me want to go for a walk.I know I haven't finished this piece yet, but it's getting late and I have to get outside before it turns dark and before my wife Joan comes home. Please excuse me.]

I’m back. Joan and I have eaten dinner and just a minute ago I finished cleaning up in the kitchen. I had to break away earlier because the day was so beautiful that I had to get outside before it slipped away.

“Love and Marriage,” a song by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen that Frank Sinatra made famous, kept going through my mind on my walk. “Love and marriage,” sang Sinatra, “go together like a horse and carriage.” On my walk, I wanted to come up with as good a simile for “writing and walking” as Cahn and Van Heusen did for “love and marriage.” I was confident I could do it.

As I was walking along my favorite route–the Great Highway next to the Pacific Ocean–I stopped several times to write down the following similes that popped into my head:

Writing and walking go together like wheeling and dealing:like throwing and catching:like buying and selling:like growing and knowing.

Here’s the one I like best: Writing and walking go together like sleeping and dreaming.

Last month I went to see the San Francisco Giants play the San Diego Padres at their home opening game of the baseball season. My friend and neighbor Bernie Schneider invited me to take the place of his wife who came down with the flu. It was a great honor to attend Opening Day in San Francisco.What I witnessed, though, was a downer. The Giants lost, 8-4, scoring all their runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. It was their fifth loss in six games. The team looked out of sync, mistake-prone and unsure of themselves. In short, they looked pathetic. After the game, I said to Bernie, “This is the worst Giants team I’ve ever seen. They look like minor-leaguers out there.”

But the Giants, to the amazement of the hometown fans, bounced back and won their next three games.You could see their confidence growing with each win.

That’s what writing is all about–confidence. Confidence is so important, especially in the writing process. When you have confidence you write freely and loosely, you’re not worried about an outcome, you’re putting words down for the joy and pleasure of it. And what arises out of that joy and pleasure is discovering a part of yourself you never knew existed. You’ll say to yourself, “Did I write that? I didn’t know I could write so well.”

Each time you have an urge to write and actually sit down to write, your confidence will grow like wildflowers in springtime or like a Giants baseball team at the beginning of a new season.

First drafts for a majority of teenagers are usually their final drafts. They don’t know what a revision is unless someone shows them. I know this because I was once a high school teacher. Me, I go over a piece–an essay, poem, story or chapter–maybe 10, 20, 50 or 100 times before it becomes a final draft. Slow, man, slow is what I am. I constantly go over a piece because I want the reader to understand what I’ve written. I also want my writing to read as smooth as a rose petal, leaving an impression that this writer makes writing seem so effortless.

It’s important for me to revise and keep revising until I’m completely satisfied with what I’ve written.

Unlike most teenagers, my final drafts come after much revision because, to be honest, I don’t want to make a fool of myself.

For the past few years I find that writing my first drafts flow much better while sitting in a coffeehouse, library or even my car.

I’m writing this piece in my 9-year-old Toyota Corolla parked at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, 100 yards from the Pacific Ocean. It’s a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining in a bright blue sky. People are walking, jogging, skating and riding their bikes on the promenade in front of me. My car windows are rolled down to let the cool breeze waft in. I’m sitting in my car’s passenger seat (the steering wheel gets in my way if I try to write in the driver’s seat). There’s a throw pillow on my lap, and on top of that is my 8 1/2″ x 11″ spiral notebook/journal. There is no phone to answer, no refrigerator to grab a snack from, no Internet or e-mail to get entangled in and no household or garden chores to distract. There’s just fresh air, my journal, a pen, people passing by and a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean before me.

I lead a very quiet existence, which, if you think about it, is necessary for a writer, except we humans are social by nature. To write first drafts outside of my house, even in my car, is a great treat for me because it gives me a chance to be among my fellow human beings while I’m doing what I love best.

I chose to become a writer in 1969 because I felt compelled to write a novel–A Class of Leaders. I wanted to share it with the world and thought the world, without a doubt, would embrace it and make me famous. Well, as things turned out, A Class of Leaders has yet to be published, and fame, although I’ve had other books published, has never come to pass.

So the question arises: What motivates me, after 40 years, to keep on writing? And my answer is: To be the best writer I can possibly be.

I don’t compare my writing to anyone else’s, nor should anyone compare their writing to mine. I just try to write what I know, what I think, what I feel, what I imagine and then try to get it published.That’s it. It doesn’t bother me that I’ve never achieved notoriety in my profession. My quest for fame isn’t what makes me tick nowadays. I take it philosophically that it’s never going to come my way. And that’s OK. What’s important to me now is to start a project and finish it.

Oh, I wouldn’t mind being famous like Garrison Keillor, Philip Roth, J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. I wouldn’t mind having that kind of prestige, but let’s face it, folks, only a very small percentage of those who take up writing reach that pinnacle of success. If fame ever results at this stage in my life, I would be a very happy man. If it doesn’t, I will still be just as happy.

So many ideas come to mind when I’m away from my desk. I can be doing anything–loading the laundry, eating dinner, talking on the phone, gardening, reading the newspaper, watching TV, walking or driving–when all of a sudden an idea will pop into my head.

Here’s the thing: I always make sure to write down the idea right away. If I don’t, I’ll not only forget it, I’ll regret it.

“If that’s the case,” you might ask, “how do you write down an idea while driving?”

Being that I always have a pen and notepad in my shirt pocket, I pull over and write it down. It should be the same with cell phones–pull over to prevent an accident and text a message to yourself.

For a writer, pen and paper are a must at all times, even on your nightstand, because you never know when an idea will come a-knockin’.

I write because it makes me happy.

I write to find out what I’m thinking, feeling, imagining.

I write to create something out of nothing.

I write to encourage people who want to write but who don’t have the confidence in themselves to put words on paper.

I write to chronicle my time here on Earth.

I write to tell stories from my own perspective.

I write because it gives meaning to my life.

I write to find out where I’m headed and where the human race is headed.

I write to try to make sense of the world.

I write to keep my brain healthy.

I write to try to explain my existence in the universe.

I write to extol life, to show how fortunate most of us are to be alive and kicking.

I write to be immortal.

I write because there’s nothing in the world that suits me better.

I write because I’m a writer.

I write, therefore I am.

Cathy Hardy, my good friend Jerry Lipkin’s wife, is very special to me. She is one of the most wise and spiritual human beings I know. One day, several years ago, while the two of us were walking along the beach in San Francisco, Cathy said something that made me stop in my tracks so I could write it down: “What am I doing today to make myself better at what I love to do?”

Me, I love to write. What am I doing today to make myself a better writer? I’m writing.

A writer has to keep working at his craft. He has to keep practicing, just like athletes, ballet dancers and musicians practice their skill. What if a musician played only on performance night? He’d be out of sync with the rest of the orchestra. The more you do something, the more you’ll improve. Regular exercise of a skill or activity helps you become better at it. I do a hell of a lot of writing in my journal, not only to write down my thoughts, feelings and ideas, but to practice keeping my hand, eyes and brain working in unison.

Millions of words have been written about writing and the writing process, so who am I to add my two cents to the dialogue? Well, I’m adding my two cents because I believe what I have to say can help other writers.

If you have an idea but don’t know where to start, just start. If you have a desire to write but don’t know what to write, I’d like to spur you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and start writing something, anything. Forget about making sense at the beginning, you’ll automatically make sense as you go along and as you revise.

Just write, don’t stop, keep your pen or fingers moving and don’t look back until you’re finished. If you do this non-stop kind of writing, it’ll be good for you, for humanity and the universe because writing is fuel for the soul. You’ll have peace of mind. You’ll discover new things about yourself. You’ll create something that no one else has ever created.

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.