Last week, Apple announced the release of iBooks 2, the second generation iPad ebook reader. What interests me more is a new tool called iBooks Author.

Writing a book is all about organization, not sitting down and letting it flow.

Writing a novel is a ridiculous task. If we can stop and recognize that fact every once in a while, we can ease our burden.

The first time I applied for a literary grant was an accident. That morning in 1992, Lewis Warsh, a New York school poet, said he was going to the post office to mail the NEA application. "What's that?" I asked.

"There is an old style of teaching where the teacher has gold bricks of knowledge, reaches back," said Father Jogues, reaching back over his shoulder, "and hands them out to the students," miming distribution. "We believe in the pizza style."

Despite what you might have been told in grade school, people are not the same everywhere. They are different, and where they are from and how they live are part of what makes them different.

What every self-published author should know.

It takes patience to be a writer. Of course, it takes imagination, a way with words, familiarity with syntax and grammar, and lots more. But it also takes patience.

Fifty years ago, as a college sophomore, I enrolled in a short story writing course taught by Harry Collins (not his real name). It was the only creative writing class I ever took and I got a C in it. According to Dr. Collins, my stories lacked verisimilitude and were weak in character development. Heedless of my instructor, over the subsequent decades I've published eight books.

There is a direct relationship between a child's ability to read and his or her overall academic success. The correlation is so strong that even the most basic reading test can usually predict a student's SAT scores with surprising accuracy.

I keep thinking about dying. Not right now, mind you. Just in a general kind of way. And I’m not being morbid either; I’m in no rush. It’s just that at my age, it’s hard not to think about end-of-life matters.

Some of us who write say we do so because we have to, while others prefer to say, as John Barth once did at a writers' conference, "Because it is so delicious to see those words go across the page."

I first traveled to Cuba from Boston when I was a barely published poet, at a time when those who worked against the US blockade of Cuba faced threats and sometimes murderous retaliation. I made a second trip a year later. After our translator Lilia Berta learned that I loved poetry and was trying to write it, she began to call me "Poeta."

When was the last time you received a rejection note from an editor? If you've been routinely getting editorial turndowns during the past few years, consider yourself lucky -- not because you've been rejected, but because you were informed of those rejections.

About 30 years ago, publishers discovered that sending their authors on "book tours" was a good way to sell books. The hottest new bookselling tool today? The "book trailer."