For a while–perhaps a whole month!–I will give the am-I-a-writer-angst a rest. Maybe it will become a habit.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some other angst running around in here waiting to be wrestled with.

So, I go into a bookstore and see the shelves of books, most of which no one will pick up and look at the jacket, much less plunk money down for. I think about the novels that agents are pitching at lunches all over New York City. I think about the novels killing time (and perhaps themselves) in slush piles and befriending dustbunnies on an agent’s desk. I think about all the people who right at this very moment are sitting at their computers or with their notebooks tapping or scribbling away.

Now, I don’t think one needs to despair exactly or take great joy in the number of trees slaughtered in this endeavor, and I don’t think one should necessarily let this keep one from joing the fray. But it might keep you up at night.

Or it might not.

I let it inspire me to make my characters crazy. Somehow it seems only fair.