Steve Lopez: So you want to retire and become a writer? Here's some inspiration

LOS ANGELES -- For some people, retirement is a long-awaited chance to sleep late, relax and celebrate the joys of life without pressure or deadlines.

For others, it's an opportunity to finally get to work.

Within a span of a few days, I heard about two retirees who had long dreamed of becoming authors, but their jobs kept getting in the way. Then they pulled the cord, hit the keyboard and never looked back.

I was on the phone one day with former L.A. Times columnist and editor Bill Boyarsky, and when I asked about his wife, Nancy, he gloated. Her seventh novel had just been published, he said, and she was already working on her eighth.

Then I heard from L.A. County Superior Court Judge who was talking up his brother, Duane. "He actually wrote