Hello, all you happy people.  Normally, as many of you know, Thursdays I post interviews.  I had to miss this week because of a technological mix-up.  And real life got in the way.

However, I wanted to post because I have been thinking about how hard it is to juggle writing, marketing your writing, and real life.  I think those writers, like Poe Ballantine, who I adore and would love to interview, who live monkish lives, have it right.  You write, sleep, work a dull day job, and that’s all you do.  No family, no stressful job, few distractions.  Other than bills and food.  But most of the time, you are reading, writing, working, or sleeping.  Food and pooping fit in there somewhere.

And yet, other writers, with families, have made it work.  Stephen King.  He wrote in the laundry room of his trailer park at night.  While working crappy jobs and dealing with his family during the day.

It can be done.  But it is hard.  If you have a writer or artist in your family, be kind to them, because art is a burden –on the artists, on the artist’s family, on everyone.

And the art doesn’t care.  It is a needy child, and it needs to be created.  And it won’t let you sleep (I was up at 4 a.m. today) and it doesn’t care if you eat, or if you neglect your family, or if you are constipated.  The art needs to be created, and if you are blessed or damned, you will be the conduit for the art.

Sometimes, to your detriment.  But what is a broken body and a shattered soul compared the glory of immortality, and the joy of the moment, when the fire of life drips from your pen?

Ugh, let me sleep.  I’ll storm the castle later.