This morning I typed those two most satisfying words - “THE ENDF” - then I went back and deleted the “F”, which was a typo. At that moment, a weight lifted from my shoulders and I shot through the roof like an ingot of cavorite, en route to the moon from whence I came.

What many people do not realize is that writing is hard work. It is easy to see only the romance, the classic image of a long-haired muscle-bound warrior poet with a big-breasted valkyrie hanging over him while he pounds away at his typewriter; “Voila!” cries he, “C’est ce la!”  and he tears off another sheet of golden prose, which is perfect on the first draft. Yes, that is true some of the time. But most of the time writing is sweat and blood mixed with sweat and tears mixed with blood mixed with sweat and a little bit of vomit. You know, “10% inspiration, 90% perspiration et cetera.” So true. So true.

So when I write a novel, it is three months of hard work, for hours a day, every day. Any day off must be made up for the next day. I drink so much coffee that by the end of a novel I am quite sick of coffee. There are flights of inspiration, where the words drip like molten steel from the corners of my slack lips, burning scars of imagination across the skin of my mind’s face; days when the words come hot and fast and I hit my quota with ease. Other days where the words must be coaxed, where they come as reluctantly as an nonagenarian’s bowel movements. These are the majority of days.

Then, after the torturous two to three hours are over (never less than an hour and a half, I can tell you), when I’m done writing for the day, I’m still not quite done writing. The book stays in my head. I think of what I’ve done and what I have yet to do. I worry about tomorrow’s words, about finding the time, about figuring out what comes next. I live more in the novel than I do in the “real world”. When the novel goes poorly, I am stressed, depressed, moody. When it goes well, I am elated, happy, good company. These figments have a grip on my brain, and they twist it as they will.

The work is difficult, it is time-consuming, it is mind-consuming, it offers little in the way of hope for external reward. God, do I love it. I have found no greater pleasure than writing. Perhaps the misery and anguish of the experience serve to throw the emotional and artistic rewards into greater relief, like this cocktail I had last night - lemon-orange with a dash of cayenne pepper.

I am mortified and thrilled that, even while this novel requires quite a bit of work, at least three other ideas jostle in the birth canal of my brain, demanding to be birthed at once. Thrilled that I have so many exciting ideas; mortified that I must deliver them.

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