Carol Stream writer, 109, working on her 12th book

When the ideas clatter and claw inside Merle Phillips' head in the dark of night, there's no point trying to get back to sleep.

So she eases out of bed and shuffles over to her desk, with its "giant-print" Bible and a magnifying glass within easy reach. She bends her 4-foot-10-inch frame toward her spiral notebook and begins to write.

"If I don't get up and write, then I forget," Phillips says, echoing a common writer's fear.

Phillips, who turns 110 years old on April 2, has written 11 books - all self-published and mostly autobiographical - since she took up writing as a serious pursuit in her 70s. When inspiration strikes, she's been known to write most of the day.

The source of her inspiration? Sitting in her recliner, which looks a couple of sizes too big for her, she shrugs. Maybe an interest from her past, she says - beyond that, she really doesn't know.

"If I have something to write about, I write," says Phillips, who lives at Belmont Village, an assisted-living facility in Carol Stream. "If I don't, I don't - and not every day because I don't have the time."

She was born on a farm in Kingston, Arkansas, in 1907, and her stories offer a remarkable window into a time almost no one living today remembers - a life of hardship, perseverance, occasional heartbreak and unquenchable curiosity.

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