Three books and a couple of hundred magazine articles have come out of a 4x8-foot corner of the living room, with nothing more exotic than a computer, three inbaskets, two file drawers, a phone, a printer, and 18 feet of bookshelf space, half devoted to standard references (Chicago Manual of Style, Roget's, Strunk and White, etc.) and half devoted to a revolving array of references pertinent to the job du jour. The only non-writing stuff allowed in the space is a 3x5 pad for the running shopping list and another to track the week's cash expenses. And they're only here because the "office" is next to the back door and the coat closet.

The key is to have a regular bit of unallocated time where you have the space entirely to yourself, with no interruptions and no messing around with stuff you know you need to do, but which you don't need to do right this minute (email being a prime example). My wife works out-of-house three days a week, and on those three days I write from 5am until noon. The rest of the week I'll squeeze in an hour or two each day when I can, and if a deadline is looming I wear a pair of those sound-deadening headphones aircraft groundcrews wear on the flight line. Whatever it takes to tune out interference and get done what must be done.

Because ideas arrive where and when they will, I've got index cards stashed in stragic locations--favorite chair, bedside, winter coat pockets, the terlet (probably a male-specific thing)--to grab them before they go, and I always carry a Moleskine caheers. These notebooks (much more portable and rugged than the spiral-ring 3x5 Meads they replace) tend to be project specific and get filled up as needed wherever, whenever--airplanes, boats, front seat of the pickup parked down at the wharf--then torn apart when appropriate and filed by category, and the better stuff gets keyed into the computer. Non-project-specific ideas go on the back pages, which are perforated, or on index cards stuffed in the little flap folder on the back cover.

So writing is an ongoing process, pretty much around the clock, pretty much wherever and whenever. But the sit-down part, the important part, the rewriting and rewriting and yet more rewriting, where ideas become manuscript and manuscript becomes articles or books, happens at a certain time in a certain place, just like a real job.

Which it is.