Yesterday I wrote a piece for my agency blog entitled “Start cultivating your creativity right now.” In that, I published an excerpt from the forthcoming book “An Illustrated Life” contributed by graphic designer, illustrator and book artist Roz Stendahl. Here are her words, which really made an impression on me: “I love blank pages. They scream possibilities to me. They clamor for attention. They call to me from across the room while I’m trying to do other work.” Looking back on my own experiences as a would-be writer over the years, it’s easy for me to see that my own…

I spent nearly six years in the Air Force Reserves, beginning almost exactly 23 (gulp!) years ago. Indeed, I spent my 19th birthday in boot camp in San Antonio, Texas, and every now and then, one or another of the deep-seated memories from that time comes back to me. I remember the cold April wind and the noisy birds that greeted us each morning, and the total lack of personal liberties that led me from one task to the next, along with my fellow junior airmen. By the fall of 1988, I was doing my annual two-week tour… as it…

Nearly five years after writing ‘The Nil,’ I was in a very unique place in my life. I’d anticipated having some great success the previous year, in 1988, when I was 22. Alas, it was one of the most difficult years of my life. But I came through it in a good way, learning to find my own way and apply what talents I had with thoughtful determination. I continued writing and submitting poetry, and collected a lot of rejection slips. I also started writing a humor column for my college newspaper not too long after this date. But on…