Our dog is Frodo, a plump and cheerful Welsh Corgi. He makes no trouble. I took him to Deering Oaks Park, found a bench in the shade and wrote four good pages on my new novel in the notebook I carry around. Frodo kept an eye on the ducks. Those four pages weren’t perfect — far from it — but they were words on paper, and they marched.

People walked past, and no one gasped, “Oh, look! That man is caught in the cosmic godhead fire of the writing life!”