"Time is on my side," the Rolling Stones once sang. I might have agreed with them in those days, but that was forty-six years ago and the Stones and I were both much younger then. Once you get to sixty you know very well that time isn't on your side. If it was it wouldn't have dragged you along to the verge of old age so quickly.

Okay, I can hear you saying "Verge? What do you mean verge?" And what I mean is that old age, like someday, never comes.

Even when I was young time wasn't on my side when it came to creative endeavors. There's never been enough time for writing or art, which is to say I've never been able to devote every waking minute to such pursuits. I begrudged the endless hours I had to spend in grade school when I could have been doing something useful like finishing my breathtaking epic (in cinema scope and crayon-color) history of space exploration or putting together another issue of Elmo the Talking Fish comics.

I habitually drew King Cotton versus Boll Weevil cartoons in the back of the classroom during arithmetic lessons, which is why I still don't know my multiplication tables for twelve. I have to actually figure out multiples of twelve. I don't know them by rote. (But I do know that in every "weevil" you can find "evil")

If only that were the worst fallout from my creative preoccupation. Unfortunately I have probably spent far too much time writing or drawing when I should have been doing something else. In other words, too much time playing when I would have been better served by working. Maybe if I hadn't I would a lot better off now, in some way or other.

But it's more than a bit late to worry about that now. I'm still scuffling to find time for writing and still failing miserably to manage my schedule shrewdly. The process of writing mystery books is, for me, a process of putting off work. I've never been able to squeeze my creative efforts into the interstices of life like some authors seem to.

My latest brilliant idea to find more writing time is to just write more, of everything, and hope the writing will make time for itself. More blogs will result in more fiction.

Maybe this is magical thinking, or maybe -- who knows -- my muse will come running back to me.