done a curious thing.  At the same time as it has vastly diminished financial returns, it has given writers a different kind of wealth: the wealth of reach. I happen to love communication in all its forms -- be it writing, speaking, performing or public relations -- and I happen to be alive at a time when the tools of communication have never been more powerful.  For that, I count myself wholly fortunate: if successful use of these tools represents "the new wealth", then I have more of it every day.   With the emergence in recent years of social media, it could be said that we are in "the Golden Age of contact", where it is increasingly possible to get in touch with anyone anywhere who has an internet connection.  (I wonder whether that Golden Age will turn out to be so golden after all, but that is a subject for another day.) For now, though, I am still in the phase of marvelling that a piece of writing that I type at my desk and then publish on my blog can soar out around the world in seconds.  This is a mundane miracle of which countless writers in the times before ours would have been envious, at the very least.  I find myself responding to this miracle in feverish fashion, endlessly producing new work, as it has always been my dream to do nothing more than create more and better ways of expressing what I feel to be right