I've just moved my work desk into the master bathroom of my house. This is the last room in my home in which I haven't yet failed to accomplish work. Every other space has proven hopeless for me — too plush, too serene, too full of distractions. I'm feeling like the bathroom might just be the austere setting I need to buckle down and manifest more of my brilliance.

Unfortunately, it seems I've strained my back in the process. Every time I twist or bend left, it feels like someone is sticking me with a blazing-hot dagger. I'll have to remember to make an appointment to see my orthopedist, Dr. Hosseini. He'll fix me right up. Regardless of my ailment, the move to the bathroom needed to take place — just had to occur. When inspiration calls, you must answer. Getting my desk up that flight of stairs was an imperative.

Sitting in my bathroom office, I type the opening line: God and everything was overthrown — everyone raging in a wild, deranged dance of life. This feels like a great sentence. Such powerful, terse language, and so profound, too — future readers will be instantly smitten, critics will pile on the accolades, the sales numbers will shatter all records. The words are that exquisite!

Upon typing the sentence, I look up and am struck by the reflection of myself in the bathroom mirror. There I am, the amazing crafter of sentences, the virtuoso behind the most compelling first line in the history of literature. My God, I feel proud, never better. Also, I can't help but be overwhelmed by the sheer magnetism of my face. There is something about the natural light streaming in through the window that makes me look positively elegant. Not since Hemingway has an author exuded such physical charm. I wonder if I should go get my camera and take a picture. The shot would look fantastic on the book jacket. What a combination: a first line of prose so genteel and subtle it could only have been divinely inspired, and the most perfectly distinguished author photo on record.

An unbelievable formula for success.

It's an hour later, and I haven't typed another word. I'm stuck. Paralyzed. Terrified. How the fuck am I supposed to write a second book? A second book is nothing like a first book. A first book is simple. There is nothing to it really: one just writes about oneself. Chapter after chapter the words spew forth from your fingers and onto the page. It's as easy as breathing. As natural as fucking. The material is all there, nothing labored at all. Just sit down and type. It comes like a gift mounted on the backs of angels' wings.

Okay, sure, there is a bit of embellishing in the parts that need embellishing, but that's to be expected. Besides, the whole thing is written under a veil of fiction. Nobody actually thinks I did all those things I wrote about. If they did, I'd be brought up on charges for a litany of crimes. For instance, there's a bit in the book about how Donald, the protagonist, has a friend who suffers a terrible motorcycle accident.

The poor man is interned in a hospital for months on end. The prognosis is paralysis. He'll never walk, never play his guitar, never wipe his own ass or make love to a woman again. However, the man comes from a large family and is burdened with the love and support of countless friends. They tell him he's an inspiration, that he needs to keep fighting, and that they're holding out for a miracle. He smiles through all of this, puts on his bravest face — he doesn't want to disappoint them, break their hearts. After four months, the doctors move him into a rehabilitation clinic to begin intensive therapy.

Day after day, he's put through terribly painful exercises — torture, really. The best-case scenario is that with a lot of hard work and some luck, his ability to speak will continue to improve and someday he'll be able to swallow solid foods again.

Donald, as often as he can, takes the bus across town after the graveyard shift at his job stocking shelves at the local grocery and then waits at a nearby McDonald's for the clinic to open for visiting hours. There he sits with his friend, reading to him, telling him stories, doing whatever he can to make his friend's life a little bit more bearable.

One day, Donald arrives for his visit and his friend confesses that he truly wants to die. He says that he's not angry and that he's not afraid, but that he can't do it alone and that there is nobody else he can ask. Donald listens to his friend's pleas and is torn about what's the right thing to do. Finally, he tells his friend that he will continue to visit him every day for the next week but that he doesn't want to hear any more about the man's desire to die. Donald only wants to discuss other things on these visits, happy things, and if the friend manages this for an entire week and at the end of it still wants to die, Donald will help him.

So for a week Donald makes the trip across town every morning after work and waits patiently at the McDonald's for the clinic to open for visitors. The two friends discuss past adventures, women, books, film, and God. It's a wonderfully rewarding experience for Donald, and he believes it is for his friend, too. On the last day of the week, Donald returns to the clinic. He is convinced that the time he's spent with his friend will bring about a change of heart. When Donald enters the room, the friend is lying in bed smiling. He looks more peaceful than Donald has seen him at any time during one of his visits over the past months.

"You look great, pal," Donald says to his friend. "You must have some good news to share."

Donald leans in very close to hear the response, as his friend's voice is softer and quieter than the sound of a blade of grass blowing in the wind. "I'm so grateful for this past week," the friend says. "I know what an effort it is for you to be here with me. So thank you. And you're right: I do feel good, and why shouldn't I? I've been given a tremendous gift. I get to die today with the comfort of knowing my best friend is by my side."

Donald can tell by the look in his friend's eyes that there is no talking him out of it and so he doesn't try. The two friends exchange heartfelt goodbyes and then Donald places a pillow over his friend's nose and mouth and applies the required pressure. Donald makes every effort not to cry throughout this terribly difficult ordeal. He doesn't want the sound of his grief to be the last thing his friend hears on this earth. Instead Donald tells his friend that he loves him and that he's going to a better place and that soon he'll never feel pain again. It takes only a single minute for the friend to pass, but in that minute Donald experiences more feelings of love, fear, gratitude, sadness, and joy than in the entire rest of his life combined. Afterward, Donald sneaks off the clinic's campus to elude any suspicion of wrongdoing, goes home, packs, and hitchhikes up to Big Sur to chill in silence at the New Camaldoli Monastery.

Shortly after the book's release, an interviewer asked me whether any of this scenario was autobiographical. I said, "Of course not. Doing something like that is grounds for sending a man to jail for murder." I then winked my eye at the interviewer. "You think I'd risk something like that?"

Anyhow, that first book struck a chord with the public, loud enough and hard enough to pay for this house I'm living in. And it bought me my first new foreign car too — a BMW. I can hardly believe it — a big...