Over the holidays I’ve been busy working away on my travel memoir about my six week trip in S.E. Asia in 2009. Here’s a little excerpt – some musings on writing, written on the bus to Halong Bay.

“It’s not always easy to seduce a blank page. You have to set the atmosphere, adjust the lighting, put on some music, incense or scented candles – what ever it takes. But when you get the vibe just right and you and the page start to flow and time passes in effortless pleasure, that’s when writing is not just better than sex, writing IS sex…

I can recall my best writing sex as clearly as my best lovers – moments when I wrote in a vanishing of time so complete I forgot who and where I was. Conjuring them up, you wish for them again, thinking you have to be with the right person, in the right place, right moment, right frame of mind. The greatest thing about writing, unlike sex, is it’s available any time, any hour, day or night and is always there for the taking. And when you do start taking it, it shows. People look at you in a new way, saying how well you look and commenting that you must be getting ‘some’ lately. You smile, nod and reply in a low conspiratorial voice, ‘yes, I am – every day!”