As An Arts Journalist In London, Working

We Irish Prefer Embroideries To Plain Cloth. To Us Irish, Memory Is A Canvas--stretched, Primed, And Ready For Painting On. We Love The "story" Part Of The Word "history," And We Love It Trimmed Out With Color And Drama, Ribbons And Bows. Listen To Our Tunes, Observe A Celtic Scroll: We Always Decorate Our Essence.

Start With The Difficult And When It Gets Easy, Everything Else Is Easier.

For A Startling Period Of My Life, I Reported The Troubles In Ireland For The Bbc. I Lived In Dublin And Was Called Out To All Sorts Of Incidents That, If Taken Together, Add Up To A War - Bombings, Assassinations, Riots, Shootings, Robberies, Jailbreaks, Kidnappings, And Sieges.

I'd Have To Struggle To Find A Subject In Which I Can't Get Some Kind Of Interested Pulse Started.

As An Arts Journalist In London, Working Mainly For The Bbc, I Interviewed Hundreds If Not Thousands Of Authors. From Them I Gleaned A Great Deal Of Passing Instruction In Writing And I Observed One Fascinating Detail: No Two Writers Approach Their Work - Physically - In The Same Way.