Writing is my Profession (sort of…) because my hands never stay still when I write. They are always fumbling. Searching. Sometimes preening before my mind as if to say, like a child playing tag, “you can’t catch me!”

I am a writer (so-called, self-called). But I don’t write as much as I am supposed to, I think.

Certainly, no one is paying me to do this. I don’t have deadlines or contracts. I don’t have a publisher or an editor pushing my work along. Maybe you can tell that by what you are reading now.

Some days I go into my study and I just sit there. I suppose I am supposed to have a process, or a way to do this that is consistent. For instance, yesterday I wrote with pencil. The day before that, I wrote in pen. Today, I am typing on a computer. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Maybe being eccentric is the qualification?

I mean, I have all of the items in my study one should have as a writer. A favorite glass, a bottle of whiskey, books that remain slightly read, knickknacks (a brick, a child’s wand, a lamp, incense sticks, a book of matches, several worn pencils, paper, a notebook full of scribblings, and a window).

Of course, one should also have a desk, which I have, and a comfortable chair, which so far has eluded me. Although I do get along fine as far as that goes, because I am not that picky when it comes to those kinds of things.

I don’t set an alarm to wake myself in the morning, yet for the past ten years I have woken up at a different time every day.

It’s not unusual for me to get lost in my writing. For instance, yesterday I spent hours looking at the windowsill and imagining the imperfections won by years and years of house settling as little roads traveled by impish creatures, with no names, but full-orbed lives replete with conversation and culture. And I want to visit there, because later, in conversation in my own life at writer parties, that I currently don’t attend, but would if I wrote a book about imp life, I could say, “I have been to a place that I am sure no one has been,” so even if they hated the book, and considered it drab, or not well written, or whatever other writers say about other writers at writer parties celebrating a writer who actually finished a book that other writers read and hate, I could say, “Well, at least you never have… blah, blah, blah.”

But alas, I sit, and open and close my window. Cycling between hot and cold, and dream about fancy parties, imps, and writing stories that no one will read.

Also, my writing voice sounds like an Englishman, and knows words like codswallop, but couldn’t possibly use it in a sentence in any serious way.

So, I just cycle through several voices in my head, which is key for a writer but not key for someone like, let’s say, a barista at a coffee shop. The barista voices would compete with real voices because they stand at a counter and serve customers, especially because so many people buy coffee nowadays. So, as a consequence, baristas, who should be writing because they hear voices too, are making coffee because real voices are asking for that more than the books that could be written.