Words On A Page Can Hypnotize You

I Show Up In My Writing Room At Approximately 10 A.m. Every Morning Without Fail. Sometimes My Muse Sees Fit To Join Me There And Sometimes She Doesn't, But She Always Knows Where I'll Be. She Doesn't Need To Go Hunting In The Taverns Or On The Beach Or Drag The Boulevard Looking For Me.

Whenever I Finish A Book, I Go Off And Have Some Kind Of Adventure. Having Had An Adventure In My Writing Chair Or On My Writing Sofa, An Internal Adventure, Then I Need To Balance That Off With An External Adventure, So I'll Go Tramping Through Africa Or Whitewater Rafting Or Float To Hawaii In A Martini Shaker Or Something.

If You Need To Visualize The Soul, Think Of It As A Cross Between A Wolf Howl, A Photon And A Dribble Of Dark Molasses. But What It Really Is, As Near As I Can Tell, Is A Packet Of Information. It's A Program, A Piece Of Hyperspatial Software Designed Explicitly To Interface With The Mystery. Not A Mystery, Mind You - The Mystery. The One That Can Never Be Solved.

Certain Individual Words Do Possess More Pitch, More Radiance, More Shazam! Than Others, But It's The Way Words Are Juxtaposed With Other Words In A Phrase Or Sentence That Can Create Magic. Perhaps Literally.

The Principal Difference Between An Adventurer And A Suicide Is That The Adventurer Leaves Himself A Margin Of Escape (the Narrower The Margin The Greater The Adventure), A Margin Whose Width And Length May Be Determined By Unknown Factors But Whose Navigation Is Determined By The Measure Of The Adventurer's Nerve And Wits. It Is Exhilarating To Live By One's Nerves Or Toward The Summit Of One's Wits.