It’s one thing to hope for the best, and quite another to cling to false hope. It’s good to have faith, but not to leave one's fate in the hands of wishful thinking or fantastical fantasy. There’s a fine line between being enthusiastically positive and utterly unrealistic. Sure, Don Quixote taught us a thing or two about living with passion and hope. But he is a fictional character (not to mention, crazy).

So where’s the balance? Never is this question more important than when ven...

A few readers seem to have a problem with my choosing to write Later With Myself: The Misadventures of Millie Moskowitz as autobiographical fiction instead of a memoir. I will admit, at first this decision was driven mainly by a desire not to advertise Millie’s troubled personal history as my own. But equally compelling was my belief that I could not present this story as entirely factual. I was prompted to write this book once I found out about events that had occurred before I was born, w...

I’ve never had writer’s block. Maybe it’s because I have so little time to write, I try to make every second count. True, with all three of my manuscripts (and now a fourth in its embryonic stage), after completing the first chapter or two, there was a period when I thought my story was stupid and I lost all interest. But after a few months’ gestation, I got back into it and words began to flow.

I think some people get "writer's block" at this stage because they are trying to do more ...