Pry open the skull of anyone who has spent a lifetime writing for hire, as I have, and inside you’ll find an infinite jumble of half-written creative pieces that would look like “magnetic poetry” on steroids if they could be attached somehow to a gigantic cosmic refrigerator.

A journal is one way to capture, contain, and compartmentalize all those ideas. And believe me, I have stacks of wire-o notebooks shoved into file drawers. But there comes a time when (unless you’re Jack Kerouac or James Joyce) the stream-of-consciousness brain dump leaves you with nothing but a chaotic Everest (or K2) of paper (dare I call it clutter?). Time to turn over a new leaf. Time to approach my creative work the way I always approached my professional writing. With an audience in mind. With a purpose. You be the audience. This is my purpose: to express my ideas one by one. With clarity. And without clutter. My goal: Each day, if I’m not working on one of my books … that (I hope) will be worth money, I’ll write something for myself (and for visitors to this page)… that (I hope) is worthwhile.