From time to time, I get on a writing roll . Words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters come pouring out of me.  It’s like magic, and I can practically see the ultimate book coming together in front of my eyes, almost effortlessly.

Those times are heady.  I get cocky, think it will always be like that, start doing the math in my head (“If I can write ten pages a day every day, I’ll have an entire book written in five weeks!”) and figure pretty soon I’ll be the most prolific author in America.

And then it stops. 

Sometimes there’s a physical component: I’m sick, I’m not sleeping, I’m depressed.  Other times, I’m distracted: the kids are sick, they’re not sleeping, my husband’s depressed.  And sometimes–most often–I just can’t get the words out.   It’s not that I’m incapable of writing a sentence, it’s just suddenly hard.  Instead of sitting and typing at a steady, calm pace, I’m forcing out a few words, darting over to check facebook, going back and rereading the last couple of pages, wondering why so much of it is bad, wondering why I can’t recapture the feeling I had just a couple of weeks earlier, when the story and the characters and the words chased each other happily out of my head and onto the page.

I wonder what’s happened to me and if I’ll ever write again.

Most writers (and students) know that feeling.  We like to call it writers’ block.  Those inclined more to a spiritual view of things talk about muses: sometimes your muse deigns to visit you and that’s when you’re productive.  Sometimes she abandons you and that’s when nothing flows.  It’s out of your control–it’s all up to one very mercurial and insubstantial lady.

So here’s my theory about the whole thing.    (And you should pay attention to me because I have absolutely no credentials, proof, or scientific studies to back me up, and since those deficiencies allow Jenny McCarthy to cast herself as some kind of autism spokeswoman, I figure they’ll stand me in good stead.)

Anyway, here’s what I think: that people are at the mercy of their own internal, physical body rhythms (I guess you can call them bio-rhythms but that term may refer to something more specific so I’d better avoid it).  No matter who you are or what you do, some days you’re going to feel energetic and productive, and other days you’re going to feel sluggish and downright useless.  There are probably lots of reasons for these highs and lows, ranging from the effect the season has on you to your basic health to the chemicals in your brain to the way your home life is going.  Whatever.  The point is that for everyone, sometimes his or her brain is ON and sometimes it’s more kind of OFF.

But if you’re a normal person with a normal kind of job–say a school teacher or a salesperson or a doctor–you can’t really have off days, so you trudge ahead and do what you need to do.  Your schedule tells you you have to keep going, so you do.  You may feel a little less enthusiastic and your reactions may be a little slower, but you get through your appointments or work hours for the day because you HAVE NO CHOICE.

But we writers are a strange lot.  When all you do is stay home to write, it’s a lot harder to “just push through.”   Mostly because you don’t have to.  Deadlines can make it happen, of course, but most of the time the deadline is far enough in the future that on any given day you can fritter your time away without immediate repurcussions.  When I sit down at the computer, I’m suddenly VERY aware of my mood and my energy level.  Does my brain feel like it’s working or does it feel kind of tired and creaky?  Are the words coming smoothly or are they reluctantly and awkwardly trickling out?

In other words, I think writers are slaves to their “muses” because they CAN be.  And other people, whose schedules require them to stay in action, simply can’t stop to think about whether they feel tuned in or not.

Some author famously would insist that his servants lock him naked in a room empty of everything but his desk, paper, and quill so he would get a certain amount of writing done every day.  (I can’t find this story through Google so it’s probably apocryphal.)  That’s one strategy to overcome the “not in the mood” issue.  Me, I go to Starbucks when I can and force myself to stay there at least an hour and a half.  Sometimes something clicks and even though I started out unable to work, after a little while the writing starts coming more easily.  Other times, it’s like pulling teeth all the way through and I can’t wait till I can walk out of there.  The one thing that keeps me going is that simply getting ANYTHING down–no matter how stilted or bad–keeps the project moving forward.  I know I’m going to rewrite anyway, so it’s all about not just giving up.

The truth is that we full-time writers are too much in our own heads.  We spend too much time alone with a computer and not enough time having to be somewhere with someone else.  It makes it easy to slide into a constant awareness of how energetic or creative you feel and that, in turn, makes it easy to realize you’re just not in the groove on any given day, which is probably a self-fulfilling realization.

On those good days, though, it’s an awesome thing.   Nothing feels better than writing something you’re happy with. 

In fact, I think I’ll go bake my muse some brownies right now.   She’s a woman–she must like chocolate, right?

Yesterday, I sent my husband a text at work.  It said, “I’M FINISHED!”  He knew I’d been working on the rough draft of my novel, so he called me back later and said, “Congratulations!  Let’s go out and celebrate!”

Unfortunately for him (he likes going out) the euphoria of writing a final scene had already given way to my normal self-deprecation.  I said, “I mean, I’m not really finished.  It’s an incredibly rough draft.  I have to do tons of work before I can even show it to anyone.   I’m not even sure the book works–I may have to change it completely.”  And so on. 

We never made it out to celebrate–although he did bring some sushi home for us to share with the kids, so I’m certainly not complaining.

But I should have celebrated finishing the rough draft–however unformed and messy it is–because the truth is, if I wait until I’ve “finished a book”  to celebrate, I’ll be looking at a very long time without champagne.

I’m never done.  Not with the rough draft, not with the first draft I submit to my editor, not with the final draft she approves, not with the copy-edited manuscript I read over and make changes to . . .

I’m NEVER done.   I could read a manuscript of mine at any stage–hell, I could read a copy from the fifth printing of one of my books–and still find tons of places where I’d like to tweak a sentence here or there or should have edited a scene more tightly or wish I had used more detail in a descripton and so on.  I’m no Flaubert, who famously and meticulously  and painstakingly crafted each sentence until it was perfect.  I’m a sloppy writer who relies on tons of revisions to get things in any kind of readable shape.  And so I’ll go on and on with the revisions until a deadline looms and then I’ll finally just shove it (figuratively speaking) off my desk and send it along.  Thank god for deadlines, I guess.

At each stage of the writing/publishing process, I hear a voice that says, “It’s not done yet.  You can’t celebrate because it’s not really done.”  The rough draft is too rough, the version I show my husband needs tons of work, I know my editor will have notes when I send her a draft . . .  It goes on and on.  

And as far as celebrating the finished book itself–the printed, bound, for-sale book–well, that takes its shape so gradually that there’s never one moment when I say, “Here it is, done!”   First there’s the cover art, which I usually see initially as a jpeg, then there’s the advanced reader’s copy (or galleys–I never know which it is really) which looks like a bound book but cheaper and shinier and not as nice, and so when I finally hold the finished copy in my hand, it’s kind of a shrug–no surprises, no big moment.  Just little drips of moments.

And as for seeing it in stores . . .  well, I’ve written in the past about that one.  You’d think it would be satisfying, right?  It’s painful, agonizing, heartwrenching (for me).  There are so many books in a bookstore.  It’s not until you see yours surrounded by all those other ones, many of them getting much more prominent display than yours because their authors are more famous or they’ve taken off in ways that yours hasn’t that you realize just how many books there are.  And how hard the task is to try to make yours stand out and be bought.  Seeing my book in a bookstore doesn’t make me feel like celebrating: it makes me want to run home and hide my head under the covers.  (In all fairness, almost everything in life makes me want to do that.)

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.  I’m wildly happy and lucky and thrilled that I get to write books and have them published.   Ask me that any day of the week and I’ll tell you so.  It’s just the whole idea of being done and of celebrating that moment–I can’t figure out when or how to do it.

I guess the trick is not to worry about feeling like I’m done, but to pin down the milestones along the way and say, “I’m going to celebrate this and then get back to work.”  So I should have gone out to celebrate last night, and when I have the draft in decent enough shape to send to my editor, I should celebrate that, too, and maybe I can figure out a moment when I’m done rewriting for good on that one particular project and celebrate that.

And I promise you this: if ever the day comes that a book of mine makes the New York Times bestseller list, I will celebrate so long and so loudly that this country won’t know what hit it. 

But I’m not going to wait for that unlikely event to happen to drink a glass of champagne with my husband.

Back in my teens, I didn’t look so hot.  I had braces and was pudgy and kept my hair severely short. I would show you a photo to demonstrate how truly awful I looked back then, but I’m fairly certain I destroyed them all in the Great Photo Purge of 1988. Plus, you know . . . I don’t want to show you.  Or any living human being.

I didn’t have a single date in high school, but, honestly, I didn’t mind, because I was spending my nights happily curled up with Edward Rochester, Messrs. Knightley and Darcy, Sir Percy Blakeney and their ilk. I knew that a relationship with some pimply teenage boy could only disappoint, compared to the passion and elegance of the romances in my favorite books.

But, resigned as I was to my high school chastity, I still hoped the future held something more exciting for me, and read these books looking for some sign that I was destined to grow into a romantic lead. Charlotte Bronte made it easy, by describing Jane Eyre repeatedly as small and plain. I was small and plain! A Mr. Rochester might one day love me! I sucked down Gone with the Wind because even though Scarlett O’Hara was a guy-magnet (unlike me), Margaret Mitchell clearly states 1) that “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful” (my emphasis) and 2) that she had dark hair and green eyes. I wasn’t beautiful and I had dark hair and green eyes! And so on, with every romantic novel, always looking for proof that my days as The Girl No One Notices would one day end, and I would assume my true role as The Romantic Heroine (preferably Windswept).

I grew up, and in the process got rid of the braces, grew my hair out, stopped eating Entenmann’s coffee cake (the root of all evil) and, after years of rejections, actually got a novel published. And then another and another. Now I was the one in the literary driver’s seat and, guess what? My heroines have almost all been dark-haired and short. Like, um . . . me. When things go well for them romantically–and things usually do, at least by the end of the book–I find it all very satisfying.

I don’t think I’m the only one doing this. In fact, I get a kick out of comparing an author’s photo with her description of the main character–more often than not, I can spot a similarity, especially in women’s fiction.

 Heroines who struggle with their weight tend to correlate with authors who struggle with their weight. Often both will have long hair. Older women frequently create older protagonists. And there’s usually a shared ethnicity, religion, or country of origin. You could chalk it up to “writing what you know.” Or you could see it, as I do, as a chance for us writers to cast ourselves in the roles we’d like to play.

Obviously, there are plenty of female writers out there inventing characters who look nothing like them. But for some of us, writing is more than just a career, a creative outlet, or a way to pay the bill-it’s a chance to say that short, plain, fat, silly, blotchy-skinned, bespectacled, normal women like us can and should find love, that just because you don’t look like Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be made love to (in both the old-fashioned and current sense of the term).

Right now I’m working on my fourth novel. At the moment, the protagonist is a short, dark-haired young woman who mostly wears torn jeans and tee-shirts. Her rival is tall, thin, athletic and blond. Guess which one gets the guy.