I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.

Ultimately if you're a journalist, one day you're writing about figure skating, one day a political debate. I loved that about reporting. I like throwing my energies into various corners of the world.

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

My first book, about Ruby Ridge, was made into a miniseries on CBS in 1996, and since then, I've dabbled in Hollywood, pitched a few things, sold a couple of screenplays and a pilot that I wrote with a buddy from Spokane, flirted with seeing 'Citizen Vince' as a film, and most recently, adapted 'The Financial Lives of the Poets' as a script.

Rock n' roll unchained a nation and revolutionized radio and the record industry, not to mention the motion picture business.

When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.

There are so many career opportunities out there now for young women, and it's great to have the opportunity to encourage them to get involved in these new careers.

Ideally, that's what you've got in an acting career is an equal number of dramas and comedies and an equal number of small films and big films.