he intellectual world of my time alienated me intellectually. It was a Babel of false principles and blind cravings, a zoological garden of the mind, and I had no desire to be one of the beasts. —George Santayana

 

My day is the reverse of what a day is for most people. Typically, I’m up working all night until five or six a.m., the same kind of schedule kept by Descartes and Balzac. How did I fall into a lifestyle like this? The happiness and well-being of my family have always been of greater importance to me than anything else in the social world; in one way or another, everything I do is for my family. Forty years ago, I felt reluctant to work on my creative projects until all the needs of my wife and children (and now grandson) had been attended to. It may sound strange for a writer to talk so fervently about family, but I’ve always taken to heart the advice given by the spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran in his lovely little pamphlet Instructions in Meditation. There, he wrote:

 

Our emphasis on the family context is because it gives us countless possibilities every day for expanding our consciousness by reducing our self-will or separateness. When we are dwelling on ourselves, we are constricting our consciousness. To the extent that we put the welfare of others first, we are able to break out of the prison of our own separateness.... This does not mean following the wishes of the other person always, but when it seems necessary to differ, it must be done tenderly and without the slightest trace of resentment or retaliation.

 

My kids would finally be in bed by nine or ten p.m. So in the quiet, wee hours of the morning, when the phone isn’t ringing and there are no errands to run or other distractions, I can concentrate fully for hours at a time. I get up at noon or by one p.m. PST so I can reply to any urgent messages or e-mails from my agents or editors (or anyone) on the East Coast before two p.m. (or five p.m. their time, the end of their business day). Afternoons and evenings are structured around my workout schedule, which is my priority to maintain health and fitness, especially now that I’m sixty-two.

 

On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, I lift weights (my bench press is at 280 pounds) for an hour in the early afternoon and, once a week, I practice my Choy Li Fut empty-hand and weapons kung fu sets and tai chi chuan sets with old friends I’ve trained with since 1981 (since my early twenties, I have believed in the traditional Japanese concept of bunburyodo— also favored by the writer Yukio Mishima—which literally means “the pen and the sword in accord,” literary and martial arts together. For readers interested in more of this, the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, volume 9, number 4 (2000), contains the article “Fist of Fantasy: Martial Arts & Prose Fiction—A Practitioner’s Prejudices” by James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor, who examines martial art stories by me—“China” and “Kwoon”—and David Hunt, Adam Hall, Jay McInerney, and Peter O’Donnell, and contains two photos of a younger me practicing Eagle Claw technique on a partner and doing a traditional Chinese staff set); on Monday and Wednesday, I get on our treadmill for one hundred minutes. (No workouts on Friday and Saturday, my rest days.)

 

With the day’s workout out of the way, my body is completely relaxed and I’m then free to run errands for my family and friends, eat a light meal, and settle in to whatever creative work is in progress while others sleep.

 

Around eight or nine p.m., I usually take a brief nap to reboot my brain, then eat a proper “dinner” at ten. Then I’m leisurely back to work again until dawn—reading, answering correspondence, writing, studying Sanskrit (I’m in my thirteenth year now), practicing meditation, with our dogs, Nova and Biggie, to keep me company in my second-floor study.

 

Naturally, this schedule goes straight out the window when I’m on the road for a speaking engagement or have an early morning meeting. That, of course, never makes me happy. I’m willing to make sacrifices during the creative process. But that very process is shored up and strengthened when we do all we can to have a balanced approach to maintaining fitness in mind, body, and spirit.