It is often said that everyone has a book inside. Certainly, any newspaper reporter worth his or her salt believes that there is a higher calling, and a best-selling book, somewhere in the future.

The loose plan is that upon retirement, the words will start to flow and the Great American Novel will be published, riches and fame will flow like rivers, movie rights and even more money will follow, and Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep will be inked for the starring roles. A seat on Letterman’s couch will be next.

After almost two years of (forced) retirement from newspaper reporting, reality is starting to sink in. In order to write a book, you must have at least a glimmer of an idea, plus some discipline and a modicum of talent. While those around me are completing their books and submitting them to actual agents, I sit and stare out the window of Cobb Manor, then read lurid crime novels and do crossword puzzles.

My lack of productivity became startlingly clear last week when I read the shocking story of author Laura Hillenbrand, who chronicled her creation of the best seller (soon to be movie) of “Seabiscuit” the hero horse of the 1930s. Somehow, Hillenbrand created this masterpiece despite a prolonged, crippling bout of chronic fatigue syndrome, which limited her to producing a few paragraphs a day, written in bed because she was too weak to walk.

Makes me feel a little ashamed.

In the July 7 New Yorker magazine, Hillenbrand traces her illness back to 1987, when she was a perfectly normal college student returning to Kenyon College from a trip. “I was about to speak when an intense wave of nausea broke over me. The smell from the [food] bag on the floor was suddenly sickening. I wrapped my arms over my stomach and slid down in my seat. By the time we reached campus a half an hour later, I was doubled over, burning hot, and racked with chills, Borden [her boyfriend] called the paramedic. They hovered in the doorway, pronounced it food poisoning, and left,” she said.

It was only the start of a nightmare of misdiagnosis and cavalier attitudes of the medical profession.

Hillenbrand could no longer find the strength to attend classes and dropped out three weeks later.

She returned home as her condition worsened. “A walk to the mailbox on the corner left me so tired that I had to lie down,” she wrote.

The doctors told her she had strep throat, prescribed antibiotics and suggested a psychiatrist. Her family psychiatrist pronounced her mentally sound despite the debilitating physical illness. “Find another psychiatrist,” her medical doctors told her. One doctor said the problems were caused by puberty. Another doctor deter-

mined the problems to be rooted in the Epstein-Barr virus. It ended up that this doctor told everyone, including his entire office staff, that they suffered from Epstein-Barr virus. Perhaps a female doctor would be the answer, she thought. That doctor told Hillenbrand that the problems were “all in her head.”

Her friends were no better. Some spread the rumor that Hillenbrand was pregnant. Another said she had AIDS.

Finally, she went to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where Dr. John G. Bartlett determined that the problems were indeed physical and were caused by chronic fatigue syndrome.

While this was comforting mentally, there was no guaranteed cure.

Almost totally confined to her apartment, Hillenbrand watched the 1988 Kentucky Derby and decided to write a magazine story on the impact of crowded fields in major races.

She researched and wrote the article without ever leaving her bed, then sold it to a small horse-racing magazine for $50.

“I did the interviews on the phone from bed. I could write only a paragraph or two a day,” she wrote.

Despite setbacks and bouts of fever-induced delirium, Hillenbrand kept writing stories on horse racing, then learned of the tough jockey “Red” Pollard, who survived a titanic set of injuries to ride Seabiscuit to fame and glory. A planned magazine article on the jockey and horse kept growing to book form.

In March 2001, Hillenbrand’s agent called to report that the book was a New York Times best seller. Two weeks later, “Seabiscuit, An American Legend” was No. 1 in the country.

I am now officially inspired.

I am going to start on that murder novel now.

As soon as I finish this crossword puzzle.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.