"At least," the interviewer never fails to say, "it gets easier after you've written eight books."

It almost breaks my heart to have to answer, "Uh, no."

That isn't QUITE true.

It does get easier in some ways and harder in others.

If there is a way in which it is "easier," it is that I know what I need to do. If there's a way in which it's more difficult, it's that I know what I need to do.

I also know exactly who does it better than I do and what I would need to do to do it the way those others do (grow more smarts and imagination on my head in the night like a Chia pet grows clover).

My other writer friends never fail to say how much "fun" they're having with their current projects, how excited they are about them, how the words keep coming faster than they can set them down.

This would be.. not my experience.

Now, don't tell anyone.

I want people to think that I spring from my bed each morning with little thought bubbles of pearlized prose swirling about my head like clouds. I want people to think that I never wake up at 5 a.m. and wish I were someone else, who worked at a bank, because I have no idea what to have the characters do next (or even first).

When I tell people that I'm not what you'd call "a natural," they scoff. They say, "It reads so smoothly." (Well, they say that sometimes. They say that on good days.)

But for me, writing is like makeup. I spend a very long time and considerable effort on trying to make it look as though I spent a very short time and not much effort on it.

If the Foolish Genie were to come to my breakfast bar right now with a bottle of peanut sauce I could open and ask for one wish, it would be this. I would ask that writing burned as many calories as running does. If writing burned as many calories as running does, I'd have a body like Eva Langorio. Or at least like a middle-aged Eva Langorio. I wouldn't have to feel guilty for laboring so hard that some days, I write only a paragraph. (And they call this a livelihood!)

The Foolish Genie hasn't yet arrived, however. I'm staring at the peanut sauce bottle my 11-year-old used for her breakfast (don't ask) and the cap, while fetching, is not magical so far as I can tell.

And so here I sit, burning six calories an hour with my fingers skim and criss-cross the keys like an elephant in the Ice Capades.

If you are a writer, I don't know if you should take heart from this or be very, very afraid. I'd go for the heart, with a little peanut sauce.

best ever,
Jackie M.