I Write Because I Have To. I’d Never Sleep Otherwise.

“We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things.” —Hunter S. Thompson

Write
November 6, 2013

I went to a birthday dinner last night and got asked the question every writer dreads: “How is your book coming?”

I shrugged my shoulders and uttered a toned-down, Charlie Brown-style “Augh!”

“How do you do it?” the Birthday Girl asked. “You just write in your spare time? That must be hard. You have a full time job.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Plus, I try to have a social life, exercise, read, and take care of the house.”

Proof that I turned the furnace on.

“Well,” said Birthday Girl, “you can take your time on the book.”

“No, I can’t,” I said. “I wake up in the middle of the night, going ‘I have to get this done.’”

Vic, one of my Hot Tub Readers, shook her head in sympathy. “Are you still working on rewriting the middle to make it into the new ending?”

“Yep. I am adding one new scene that I am almost done with.”

“She wrote enough for two books,” Vic told Birthday Girl.

“What?! You must love doing this. How long have you been working on it? A year?”

Ha. Ha. Hahahahaha.

Last night, after I got home and showered, I worked on the new scene, and now it is almost, almost  done.

Then I slept better than I’ve slept in weeks.

Hunter S. Thompson (Photo credit: Morgacito)

Here is the Hunter S. Thompson article I quoted at the top of this post.