Night before last, I woke up in a sweat.  I couldn’t get back to sleep because I was having an anxiety attack about my next book.  Oh, it’s nothing new — I have these from time to time, and sometimes I’ll lie awake for hours, mulling over what’s wrong with my plot, whether I’ll be able to fix it, whether I’ll meet my deadline.  When I finally do fall asleep, that anxiety follows me in the form of dreams.  Mine usually involve showing up at school for a test and suddenly realizing: I FORGOT TO ATTEND ANY CLASSES!  But I know what those dreams are really all about: how the writing is going.

No matter where I am or what else I may be doing, this job is never far from my mind.  I’m either worried about how my last book did, or I’m worrying about how my next book is taking shape.  I can be sitting on a beach on vacation, yet I’ll never really relax because I know that there’s a half-written novel waiting on my desk and I have only a few months to finish it.  I can’t remember the last time I really, truly let go of the job.  Six months ago, I was sitting on a sailboat in Turkey, surrounded by ancient ruins, yet this little voice kept whispering, “Why aren’t you working on your next book?  You can’t afford to sit back and have a good time!”

It’s hard for any writer to complain about this job.  Winter winds may be howling outside, but we get to work in nice warm offices.  There’s no hard labor, no heavy lifting.  Yet because our work is mental, because the writing of a book takes months, we can’t really set it aside at the end of the day when we get up from our desks.  The work hangs over us, even while we lie on the couch watching Star Wars for the 57th time.  It invades our sleep, distracts us from conversations, makes us impatient with our children.

Sometimes I love this job.  Sometimes I hate it.  But I have to say this about it: it’s never, ever boring.