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.

When the woman Jake Massry lives with leaves him for another man because he can’t succeed as a writer, and his old world father, on his deathbed, orders him to get a “real” job, Jake, to get his head straight, hits the highways of America in his worn-out VW bus, Old Bones, in search of himself and his country.

It’s Spring 1974—prices are spiraling upward and President Nixon is embroiled in the Watergate fiasco. As he travels from place to place in Old Bones, Jake meets a colorful cast of characters: sexy women, gays, born-again Christians, philosophers, racists, bullies and Gary Morse, a 19-year-old hitchhiker who possesses a large “red ruby” given to him by a young heiress.

Excerpt from Chapter 19 “Ted and Alice”

The next day, when I entered Texas at Farwell and started driving north, I began to notice the difference between New Mexico and the Lone Star State. New Mexico—practically untouched by human hands. Texas—huge farms and immense cattle ranches.

I entered the city limits of Amarillo and stopped at the first bar I came to. Sitting next to me on a tall stool was a slim fellow wearing a hard hat. He was dressed in work clothes and dusty boots. His name was Ted Stanton. He was a construction worker who had recently gotten married. He bought me a beer when I told him I was just “passing through.”

“Do you know any place around here where I can get a decent, inexpensive meal?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see…” said Ted. “Yep, I know the perfect place. My place.”

“Won’t that be putting you and your wife out?”

“No, no,” he said. “My wife’ll be glad to meet you.”

After Ted helped me give Old Bones a little push, I followed him a few miles to the apartment complex where he lived. His wife Alice wore a friendly smile when he introduced me to her.

Alice—twenty-two, with long, wavy red hair, freckles covering her face, blue eyes, and a knockout figure—proceeded to give me a tour of her one-bedroom wonderland. In the meantime, Ted went into the kitchen to rustle up some dinner. As soon as she finished showing me around, she plopped down in an armchair.

After working all day, I’m thinking, the guy comes home to a wife who doesn’t have a job, and then he has to cook dinner while she sits in a chair and talks to me. What a deal she has.

Ted served us hot dogs and beans for dinner.

The Stantons had plenty of beer in the house. In fact, their refrigerator had two full shelves of it. After dinner, we drank and drank while we talked and talked. Let me clarify that. It was Alice who did all the talking. She had something to say about everything—plus more. Also, if she needed something—a beer, a cracker, peanuts, a cigarette—it was Ted who would get up and get it for her. She just wouldn’t budge from her chair.

What kind of woman is Ted married to? Does he like being her slave?

It was around ten when I stood up and told Ted and Alice that I was going out to Old Bones to bed down for the night.

“You ain’t sleepin’ outside on a cold night like this,” said Ted. “No sireee. We’re puttin’ you up on our couch.”

Ted brought me sheets and blankets and then excused himself, closing the bedroom door behind him. What a gem of a man he was.

While I was fixing the bed, Alice was still going strong. Will you shut up already! I felt like saying. But, of course, I didn’t.

Why doesn’t she stop talking? I kept asking myself over and over. And then the answer came to me. She’s lonely. She doesn’t have anything to do or anyone to talk to during the day. All she does is stay cooped up in this apartment drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and watching soap operas. Poor Alice. Poor Ted. Poor me.

Alice didn’t stop. I listened and listened and listened and listened, but heard nothing at all.

When she mentioned President Nixon, my ears perked up. “I think he’s a good man,” she said. “I really do. He’s done so much for this country, but you think he’s respected? Hell no. Just the opposite—he’s getting shit upon. I feel sorry for that man. He made peace with China, didn’t he? Last year he brought the troops home from Vietnam. I know all about Watergate and all that crap, but that was just an itty-bitty mistake. Now the Democrats are tryin’ to impeach him. He deserves better’n that. He’s done this country so much good…”

Alice didn’t know she was talking to a man who despised the president for employing his own “itty-bitty” spy ring to burglarize the Democrats’ headquarters, but I held my tongue. I knew if I argued with her I couldn’t have changed her mind in a million years. Besides, I wanted a warm place to sleep.

Finally, around 11:30, the talking machine said, “It’s time for me to go to bed.” She rose from the armchair for the first time that evening, turned off the lights, and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

I undressed, got under the covers, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes.

Silence. Peace. Sweet dreams.

Then I heard the bedsprings in their room go creak…creak…creak-creak…creak-creak, creak-creak…

Alice began to warm up real fast, moaning and groaning with such uninhibited passion. Then, as the minutes wore on, she started screaming.

I couldn’t help but tune into their privacy. In fact, I’m sure the whole apartment complex could probably hear them. And Ted, that Ted—wow! What stamina! What staying power! They were at it for close to an hour.

There’s no telling how much a man will put up with for some wild, passionate sex—even if it’s with his own wife.

Joshua Sampson, a white history teacher in a black ghetto high school, throws the book away and lets his students take charge of their own destiny. The place is South Central Los Angeles. The time is 1969. Sampson’s students, with his guidance, begin teaching his classes. He sits among these future leaders as they voice their opinions on Vietnam, freedom, Black Power, drugs, police harassment, the grading system, capital punishment and whether Sampson is teaching them or not.

Excerpt from Chapter 13 “Two Stubborn Ol’ Mules”

Cleveland Jones was reading the notes from the “Ideas and/or Complaints” box to second period:

_______________

Mr. Sampson,

Would you please stop using foul language in the classroom. I’m accustomed to hearing it on campus. And that can’t be prevented. But in the classroom I think you ought to have more respect for the young ladies.

From your 1st period student,

Nancy Vellon

_______________

Mr. Sampson,

I think you’re a hip cat. I dig your style. You give everyone an equal chance. You really are doing your thing even if you’re not a brother. I still want to pat you on the back and call you a brother. You’re getting to look like a hippie more and more with that beard you got. You are a very copacetic teacher.

_______________

Mr. Sampson,

Why don’t you grow a “Natural” along with your beard? I think you’ll look a little better. On second thought you should stay the way you are. It’s your thing.

The Enchanted Young-one

_______________

Mr. Sampson,

If teachers grade students then students should grade teachers.

A concerned student

_______________

I think the class is taking advantage of Mr. Sampson for him telling us that he’s going to give us A’s in History. I don’t know if giving us A’s is good or bad.

The Enchanted Young-one

_______________

I thought the note about the students grading teachers was an excellent idea, and so I decided to let the class grade me that period. After I gave them the assignment, J.B., ordered me to her desk. It was the first time she ever said anything to me, so her command didn’t bother me a bit.

She handed me a piece of paper and told me to read it to the class.

I said, “Why didn’t you drop it in The Box for Cleveland to read?”

She said, “I want you readin’ it, Mr. Sampson.”

“You read it,” I told her, “you’re the one who wrote it.”

“You read it, Mr. Sampson.”

She was so darn stubborn we could’ve spent the whole period going back and forth like that.

The paper was torn from a 1969 desk calendar, dated July 4. It’s only the middle of April, I thought, why would she tear it from the month of July? The paper was folded in half and on the outside it read: “For Period 2/U.S. History/Mr. Sampson/J.B.” I unfolded it and studied the contents. By the time I finished reading it to myself, the class was in an uproar. I had to raise my voice several times to get their complete attention, because J.B. had done something that touched my heart. When I finally got silence in the room, I read:

“‘There never was a good war or a bad peace.’—Benjamin Franklin.

“‘To teach is to learn twice.’—Joseph Joubert.

“‘What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.’—Henry David Thoreau.

“‘The Constitution speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.’—Senator Margaret Chase Smith.”

Here was a girl who didn’t say one word in class since the semester began. I thought she was just a shy, inattentive student. But by god, she was AWARE. She’d been listening, observing and thinking the whole time. In those four quotes, she extracted the essence of what I was trying to teach my students. I felt as if I had just scored the winning touchdown in the last second of the Super Bowl.

After class, I was sitting at my desk reading the grades the students in second period gave me: A, A, A, F, C, “No man can judge another man, for a man is what he is to himself and himself only,” A, B, B, B, A, F…

I heard a girl clear her throat and stopped what I was doing. It was J.B. She was standing over me, one hand on her hip and her head slanted to one side. She had on a yellow cotton blouse and a plaid skirt. Two rabbit teeth jutted from between her thick lips.

“Mr. Sampson,” she said, “I gotta talk to you.”

“About what, J.B.?”

“Why can’t you wait till the end of the semester to give us A’s?”

“Why should I wait for something I can do now?”

“‘Cause Mr. Thomas, he ain’t gonna understand why you givin’ us A’s. You gonna lose your job when he finds out.”

“He’s not going to fire me, J.B. Don’t worry about it.”

“You wrong, Mr. Sampson.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You wrong!” she declared.

“No, I’m not.”

“Mr. Sampson,” she said, stamping her foot to the floor, “you just as stubborn as an ol’ mule!” and she turned and stormed out of the room.

“J.B.!” I shouted after her, “thanks for those four quotes!”