I so admire the artistic heart in New York City. Artists, singers, painters, dancers, musicians take their creativity and put it out there every day – on sidewalks, in parks, by subway stops, in public basements and walkways, on benches in and street corners. I asked this artist is he ever gets nervous before he sketches someone. “Sure, I do,” he says. “Every creative person gets nervous when he or she puts his work out there, that is part of it.”

This artists paints for himself in his studio, for the public in Central Park, he is determined to be an artist no matter what, I see this spirit all over  New York, creatives determined to live their life in a tough and expensive city. They do not quit, complain little, do not give up. They paint portraits, ride cabs, wait tables, they do their work. I saw hundreds, even thousands of them in Manhattan.

I do not complain about my work or speak poorly of my challenging life as a writer. Like the artist in Central Park, I am lucky to be a writer, I embrace the writer’s life, good and bad. It is the life I chose, and the life I will be living until my time here is done. And yes, I was frightened to write everyone of my 28 books, and I will be frightened to send the very last one out into the world. That is a part of the life I chose, and I embrace it every day. I ask the muses of the written world to strike me down if they ever hear me complain about my life, tell it as a struggle story or let fear silence me or slow me down.