P.S. One more thing: And this is more to the adults than the kids: I wrote Regarding the Fountain when all I really had was time - and a library card. I didn't have a publishing contract. I didn't even have a job. Worse yet, I had no real prospects for a job. I had recently ended a relationship, and had no prospects in that department, either. I had very little confidence in myself or my writing because the newspaper editor who had fired me had done so in a letter in which he outlined all my faults as a writer. I didn't even have very much food in my house because this was during an ice storm, back before I had a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I couldn't get out of my little Missouri valley to buy food. All I had was coffee, Diet Coke, microwave popcorn ... and time. I also had a newspaper article I'd torn from the business section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about two guys who designed fountains. I wrote Regarding the Fountain book in one week for no other reason than that it amused me. Of course I had to spend a year and a half rewriting it, but I think there's something to the power of finding time, making time to do things that simply amuse us. Kids are better at this than we are. But I know I'm at my best when I stop thinking like a 47-year-old and start thinking like a 10-year-old who just wants to have fun and make a splash
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