'I have had some experience of the life of a part-time writer during the past 40 years. It's obviously a life of pressure—so much so that I wonder what happens when that pressure is suddenly removed. Does the writer suffer from the literary bends, get nitrogen in the ink of his arteries or suffer paralysis of the verbal nervous system? ' (Introduction)
From a talk given by Colin Thiele at the quarterly meeting of the Australian Society of Authors in Adelaide on 3 May 1980.