I have come to understand and appreciate writers much more recently since I started working on a book last fall. Before that I thought golf writers got up every morning played a round of golf had lunch showed up for our last three holes and then went to dinner.

I write best in the morning and I can only write for about half a day that's about it.

I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster and I start that way the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it.

The process hasn't changed but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work.

I get started at 5:30 in the morning and write till 10 A.M. Then I hike six or seven miles before going back to work.

You know I mean this sincerely you know I'm so grateful that I get to get up in the morning and do this you know and write books.

At the very end of a book I can manage to work for longer stretches but mostly making stuff up for three hours that's enough. I can't do any more. At the end of the day I might tinker with my morning's work and maybe write some again. But I think three hours is fine.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning sat down at the typewriter - now computer - lit up a cigarette.

I get up in the morning torture a typewriter until it screams then stop.

I write early in the morning usually after reading portions of at least half a dozen newspapers on the web.