Well, it’s pretty simple, I write because I love writing.  

When I write fiction I write because I love the idea of creating entire worlds out of nothing and populating them with people who are at once entirely fictional and very much based in the real world. I create situations for characters based on things that happen in the real world, but make characters that react differently than I would, or even could, and then see where my sense of adventure takes me. 

When I write about politics, I write because I love the give and take of the political world.  I do it because politics is as important as the oxygen we breathe.  I do it because I personally think it needs to be covered and written about from as many different angles as possible, and I cannot envision a world without my voice as part of it.

When I write columns about gardening, I am writing not just about my expertise in the field.  I am sharing with the world my love of horticulture, and in truth of nature itself.  For years I have had plants, a great many years, and they have brought much beauty to my world, and that beauty moves me to write about it.

There are days when I can write thousands of words for hours on end on a variety of subjects that would make a non-writer’s head spin and not think twice about it. Joy is in the mind that creates, and the hands through which words flow to the page. 

Never in a million years could I even begin to think about even a day without me putting pen to paper, or more properly put fingers to keyboard.  The process of creation, of using a deep inner vision to create, to describe,  to cry out for justice in an unjust world, to illuminate, incites in me a passionate fervor for the written word that can never be extinguished.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have worlds to create…