I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.

This condition [irony] has nothing to do with writer's block, a psychological syndrome, which is one of the few I have not diagnosed for myself!

Note, the reply will not be "I write," an act that I have, after all, been performing since I was nine.

I have a muse who's very powerful, but I'm still a hopeless deadbeat of a poet.

In a way, this kind of insight or recognition often permeates the way I think of character, how I plot action, and the way in which I use imagery, seeing binaries as false.

It's why muse is so impatient with me. I don't ever go to her until after the teaching or whatever is over.

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.