The television show, Sixty Minutes, claims that James Patterson is the best-selling author in the world. Wow, really? It’s okay. I’m not jealous.

What I am jealous of is his office! It’s a light, bright room about the size of my house, and it’s inside his 22,000 square-foot home in Florida.

It has a great, big window overlooking his garden, or was it a canal or the ocean? I was so enthralled with his bookshelves and file drawers — all built-in — that I didn’t notice his view.

As for myself? I am writing from a small desk in my bedroom, and I’m crammed into the corner. I do, however, have a view out the window — of my patio and backyard. Right now it’s a pretty view because I’ve added some plants along the east wall, and the view of the back wall is lovely with hibiscus and little pansies (Johnny-Jump-Ups), and geraniums and some other pretty plants whose names escape me right now. They’re from Hawaii. What the hell are they called?

I will remember and then I will write them down before I completely lose it.

Mr. Patterson’s file drawers are a creamy white, and they’re built into the walls, as I mentioned.

My file drawers (two) are in an ugly, fake-wood cabinet and jammed up between a table and my desk. If you pull out the file drawer too far, it will fall on you, and if it doesn’t kill you, it will maim you.

Besides books on Mr. Patterson’s top shelves, all his stories in progress are stacked in perfectly neat piles all along the lower shelves, each weighted down with a paperweight. No page is out of place.

A story I was working on today just blew off the desk when a strong gust of wind hit, and the rest of my papers are scattered on my bed, all waiting, once again, to be gathered and catalogued. I must admit, though, that it’s fun discovering an old story that I might have written twenty years ago.  Because I am unorganized, I can be surprised.

This is my “writing career.” To put it mildly, I write in spurts — often separated by five, ten, or twenty years.

I enjoy my stories and how they take me back to a certain time and place and then other memories flood in — mostly good.

As I said, Mr. Patterson has hundreds of semi-stories all over his office, perfectly organized, and he writes with a pencil! A pencil?

If I wrote with a pencil, my stories would be even further (Farther? I’ll bet James Patterson has someone to check that stuff for him) apart in years.

I would start writing and then fall asleep on the tablet with drool on the paper.

In fact, I’m going to move some of the papers on my bed and lie down with them before I fall asleep and drool on my computer.

Plumerias!

The End.