Nobel prize-winning British author Doris Lessing was interviewed on the BBC the other day. She said winning the prestigious award in 2007 had been a "bloody disaster."

"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed," she said. Doris Lessing has written more than 50 novels, plays, memoirs and short stories in her 88 years. She told the BBC her writing "has stopped, I don't have any energy any more."

Ever since I turned 60, oh, so many, many months ago, my phone has been ringing, and I don't know why. There are photographers at the windows, and I work on the second floor. But I keep on churning out Words on Books. It's gotten so I've stopped answering the phone any more.

The prizes keep coming, however, as do free books sent for review by various important, major, publishers. Just the other day, in fact, I received yet another prestigious award and a couple of free books. I can't tell you about the prize, however, because they have asked me to keep it quiet, as they don't like writers begging for one or another of their valuable cash awards. But it rhymes with Wurlitzer (if there were two r's in Pulitzer).

I could show you my collection of writing trophies. I hide them behind a purple curtain. I'm not shy about winning all the time, of course, but I don't like to flaunt. It makes other writers feel badly.

Some writers have a problem with procrastination. Others suffer "writers block" although I wonder if such a thing actually exists. I've never had that affliction. Words on Books simply pour out of my computer. I pick the best ones, and there you have it, another prize-winning episode.

When I was a journalism student at San Francisco State College, now University, in the 1960's, my beat was the Administration Building, all two floors of it. I'd wander up and down the halls, wondering where the stories were. If I found one, I'd go back to the student newsroom and sit down in front of an unoccupied Royal typewriter. The keypads were sticky and smelled like peanut butter because everyone ate, drank, talked and typed at the same time.

I'd sit there for an hour, for another hour, well, for a very long time, sweating out the first sentence. The journalism instructors told us, "Put everything into your lead, because the editor is going to cut off the bottom of your story, and readers don't usually read past the first two paragraphs anyway."

That's different now. Readers read all the way to the bottom of stories, newspapers are thriving with more subscribers and advertisers than ever, small independent bookstores are multiplying and the Internet is for scholarly geeks only. Wow. I think I just woke up from a very pleasant dream.

There are fewer newspapers, and fewer readers of newspapers, so the art of writing newspaper copy has faded. But I learned in those days the only way to get anything at all down on paper was simply to begin.

It just occurred to me that maybe the reason I was handed the Administration Building beat was that no one else would take it.

So, one day the college president was giving another boring interview, and I wrote it up, and wow, the San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story (without crediting me, of course) because I had a scoop. The budget was going to be cut, and it was a big secret, but the President had let it slip, and I hadn't even realized it was a big story, but it made news, and the rest is history, and a long string of prestigious awards for Yours Truly.

Unlike Doris Lessing I plan to keep on writing. I like those shiny golden statuettes on my mantle, and who knows, the way I'm going, I'll probably pick up a couple of Nobel Prizes along the way. I will need an unlisted phone number.

Aired Sunday May 18, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday May 21, 2008 at 1:00 pm

NOTES:

You will find an article about the BBC interview here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7393915.stm

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