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It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.

Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

I thought if I really wanted to be serious about writing, I should make my own desk.

I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything.

When I first started writing, it was me alone with a computer in my apartment. I hated the time away from other people, and my writing sucked. Now I have a laptop; I can do the most tedious part of my job in a public place.

I don't use a computer in writing at all. I'm sort of old-fashioned about it.

I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

Writing can be a very isolating profession. By its very nature, you spend a lot of your time barricaded in your house or office, typing on your own.

I do have an office where about 70 percent of my writing gets done, but sometimes it does get a bit stir-crazy to be cooped up in there, so I'll grab my laptop and write somewhere else: another room in the house, out on the patio, or even Heaven-forbid, a trip to Starbucks. But I also write on the road.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.