I write to express what I think and share what I know. To me, writing is a cross between teaching and self-expression. It's also an excellent lure to attract clients for my business. My ideal client takes written communication seriously, so he or she reads avidly to learn and get inspired. When his or her reading program intersects with my publishing program, an electric connection often occurs.

I was a quiet middle child who enjoyed being on my own when my siblings went out to play baseball. The library became my favorite place even before I started school, and once a week I took out as many books as they allowed me to. One of the books I found in the library was "The Golden Book of Poetry," which I loved. I asked my mother for some composition paper and began writing my own fanciful verses. At age 7, I read several poems I had composed on "Admiral Jack," a TV show that combined Popeye cartoons and local kids showing off their talents. At age 9, I started a newspaper that I published and sent to all my relatives. Although my parents encouraged me to write, no one in my family or my school knew anyone who wrote for pay, so no one talked to me about writing as a career option. Only after I had finished school, all the way to a Ph.D., did I realize that writing could be a career.

Reading made me who I am. Growing up, I spent more time reading than anything else, playing piano second and hanging out with friends third. My two favorite books prior to junior high school were "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett and "Harriet the Spy," by Louise Fitzhugh. "The Secret Garden" opened distant worlds to me (India and England) with characters whose inner lives, sorrows, fears and triumphs seemed realer than real to me. I also treasured that book because it was the first book I owned, a gift from a wealthy aunt. I loved "Harriet the Spy" for its irrepressible heroine who secretly observes her community and gets in trouble for it. In seventh grade, I read "Gone With the Wind" in four days by holding it under my desk in the back of the room (how could the teacher not have noticed?) and continuing with a flashlight in my bedroom after I was supposed to have gone to sleep. Today I still read 150-200 books a year - a lot of fiction, some general interest books that got great reviews and a good number on business or psychology. The thought of some day being no longer able to read for some reason sends fear and trembling through my soul.

I am a deeply auditory writer and hear all the words as I write them. The way words sound, the rhythms of sentences and the cadences of a paragraph are elements I instinctively fiddle with. When I retire, I hope to return to a study of poetry, because that's where the auditory properties of words have their greatest expression. However, even with prose such properties make a difference, even if readers are not consciously aware of the impact of sound and rhythm.

In the 1980s and 1990s my books were published by the giants in the publishing world - HarperCollins, Penguin USA, Henry Holt and others. One of my books was selected by the Book of the Month Club; various volumes were translated into Japanese, German, French and Korean; one book was excerpted in Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitan magazines and another was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show. In those years, major publishers had a huge advantage over self-publishers in distribution, foreign rights, cost-effective printing and publicity. That advantage has eroded to the point that someone who already has an audience or knows how to cultivate one can now quickly, inexpensively and effectively publish their own work and make good money at it, in both print and digital formats.

Develop your craft. Don't publish half-baked works. "Good enough" is not worthy of you. Study excellent books that are well-regarded in your genre and write something not just for today and next year, but for the ages.