Pronouns and adverbs and adjectives glowing
Phrases and clauses and paragraphs flowing
Words about cabbages; words about kings…
These are a few of my favourite things.

Titles, quotations, and epigrams witty
Narratives gripping and verse patterns pretty
Thoughts that soar upwards on poetic wings…
These are a few of my favourite things.

I’m a writer
I’m a fighter
– though my hip is sore
I simply dive into a manuscript then—
I don’t feel a thing — no more.

Research on poisons and research on horses
Legal procedures for wills and divorces
Ballrooms and phaetons and swordfights and all
These are the things that keep me on the ball.

Girls who are daring and men who adore them
Who’ll wade into danger and sacrifice for them
There isn’t much of me, I’m really quite small…
But when I am writing I’m twenty feet tall.

I’m a writer
I’m a fighter
– though my hip is sore
I simply dive into a manuscript then—
I don’t feel a thing — no more.

(Twenty-five years ago I was in business with a dear friend, doing commercial writing, and we wrote the first half of this one quiet afternoon. I came across it in a clean-out and rewrote the second half this morning.)