"Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overwhelming.” --Nero Wolfe, in Rex Stout's The Mother Hunt (1963)

As I write a little more of my second novel Big Sleep Blues each morning, I choose a slightly different course for my hero Archer Blackwood. And thus I turn my back (and Archer's) on all the other things he might do and come to be.

Sounds harsh, and---yes!--corrupting. Yet each one of us must do this to himself or herself, each and every day of our lives.