To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December right?

I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk and I began to write. The result for better or for worse is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.

It felt very natural to me to write a Christmas song but at the same time I had to really put all sorts of pressure aside and just let the creativity flow and see what came out.

First of all I've been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums songs I didn't write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums and they were all very successful.

And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people songwriters who are around.

I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician a writer an athlete or a businessman there is no getting around it. If you do you'll win - if you don't you won't.

The thing about the 600 words I mean some day you can do a very very very hard day's work and not write a word just revising or you would scribble a few words.

The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft every day - the belief even in the face of obstacles that you've got something worth saying.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

I have to work really hard eight shows a week to get a nice check as an actor. But when I write a play and it's a - knock wood - hit the checks come in for many years.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what without this book he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women or black students behave as though they can only read blacks or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

Then I read Little Women and of course like a lot of really young girls I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.