It's 9:30 on a TGI Friday night, and I'm sitting in my office, squirreled away in a corner of my basement. I'm feeling very productive as a writer these days. Jim Brickman is playing on the stereo, and I'm reclining in a very comfortable office chair that I pieced together years ago from two broken chairs my company was throwing away. The place has a definite cluttered, patchwork feel to it, but I like it.

On the wall in front of me is my only serious investment as a writer. It's a cork bulletin board in a maple frame covered with index cards that I use to track my writing projects. It is divided into columns labeled: To Begin, In Progress, Submitted, and Published. The idea is to capture good ideas on cards, then become rich and famous by migrating the cards from To Begin to Published, using only clever words and keystrokes. But sadly, it has become as disused as my office over the summer.

Hieroglyphics on my cave wall

The only recent item on the board is a charcoal drawing my oldest daughter made of the steam train that passes my back yard. For an 11 year-old aspiring artist, it's pretty good. It's also enormously ironic. It was drawn from charcoal created in the fire the steam engine started in my back yard last May. But that is another story.

Continued...