The issue is the focal plane. Louis L'Amour knew this, and regardless of opinions about the altitude of his writing, he was prolific and turned out tight plots and bright colorful characters. He said that given a typewriter he could write in the middle of Holloywood Boulevard. Steven King described the transition zone that occurs when a writers focus meets the page; the attention burns a passage and the writer finds himself dropped whole through a reality-gate and into the universe of the page. Like any universeinto which one drops, it may be still, dull, riotous, harmonious, coherent, fractal and dissipative, black and impenetrable, flat and routine, or scintillating and colored with discoveries. You start from where you land, and proceed toward where you mean to go.

But the key to admission is the ability to place attention on that focal plane and place the intention-in-full of your highest self there, as well; then the paper vaporizes and the far horizons emerge from the mists of transition. Or so it seems to me.

You can tend the environment to make it conducive, and tend the ergonomics so your body isn't always wincing and pullling you back out. You can clear your plate of other obligations so your mind can relax and let you go off without interrupting you. You can send the kids away and lock up your spouse and mail your dog to Juneau in order to have the space you want. Or you can do none of these things; and if your care for the focal plane is done right, it will not matter. You will write.

A