I’ve decided the hardest thing about writing is constantly thinking about what I wrote or plan to write. It wouldn’t be that much of a problem if I was working on just one project or book. But I’m currently — among other things — planning a novel, writing a screenplay, polishing some treatments, and freelancing. My son, Chris, also a writer, thinks I have too many balls in the air. I run a lot of ideas past him. He’s getting dizzy.

I must admit, I don’t do as much freelancing as I should. My current project, for the Staten Island Advance, is to write about my wife’s Alzheimer’s journey. The editor, Brian Laline, offered to have another writer do the story because he suspected it would be too tough for me. Boy, was he right. But I will soldier on. I was a Marine, after all.

Enough of that.

I’ve been watching “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” from the 1950s, and I’ve only just scratched the surface. There are seven seasons, and each one has 39 half-hour episodes. That’s 273 episodes! Then there’s “Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” which clocks in at 93 episodes. (As the name suggests, these are twice as long.) I break up my Hitchcockian day by watching both versions — from the 1960s and 1990s — of “The Outer Limits.”

Do the math: That’s a lot of shows, all of which have seemingly unique plots. Of course, most of them, even the off-the-wall ones, were derived from the Romans, who stole them from the Greeks, who probably stole them from cavepeople: overcoming a monster; rags to riches; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy; boy meets girl; boy loses girl; and boy and girl get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger.   

(Okay, I made that last one up.)

Not only are these shows grist for a writer’s plot mill, but the acting is also fabulous. Many respected performers who thought the boob tube would kill their thespian dreams discovered a whole new source of income on it. I just watched Claude Raines give a performance on TV that rivaled anything he ever did in the movies.

And these famous actors — including Martin Balsam, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Richard Chamberlain, James Coburn, Joseph Cotten, Hume Cronyn, Bette Davis, Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Duvall, Anne Francis, Robert Redford, James Caan, Peter Fonda, and a host of others — sure did emote on that small screen. I urge you to catch them on your wide one!

Lawrence De Maria has written 31 novels but has slowed that output down, thanks to cable TV. He likes to have a bourbon whenever he watches an old TV series. The doctor says his liver is fine. He’s thinking of changing bourbons — or his doctor.

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