Since a lot of questions I'm asked duplicate one another, I thought it would help communication if I posted these FAQ's along with some answers. From time to time, of course, they'll change. Just as your questions change.

Q: How long have you been writing the column?

A: I'm past my 20th year at the Chronicle, but I did the column at the Houston Post for 32 years before moving to the Chronicle in 1984. People often ask me when I intend to retire. I have no retirement plans now. My intention is to keep writing the column as long as the Chronicle wants me.

Q: How far ahead do you stay?

A: This is probably the most frequent question I hear. The answer is I don't stay ahead at all. The column you see in the paper on a Wednesday was written just the day before, and probably didn't reach my editor until noon Tuesday.

Some readers imagine that a columnist has a great backlog of pieces in a file, written far in advance. People ask me why I don't write two weeks of columns at once and then loaf, or go fishing. I don't do that because for me it's impossible. My life has been controlled so long by deadlines that I'm unable to accomplish anything without one.

Once in a while I'll dig in and get a couple of columns ahead when I want to go off to some remote place where there's no way for me to send in my stuff. No telephones, I mean. But I don't like to stay very far ahead. If there's an interval of several days between the time I send my copy in and the time it appears in the paper, situations can change and throw the column dangerously out of date.

Q: Who is the partner you often refer to in the column?

A: She is my wife. We were business associates before we married and calling her my partner is natural to me. Also, it's journalistic tradition that the writer of personal essay columns refer to his or her spouse as something other than "my wife" or "my husband." So "partner" is a sort of nickname. By the way, the details of how we met and became partners are set forth in my book, Supper Time.