Aaaaaaack! Whether anybody in the entire free world realizes it, writing is work. It is hard work, carved out not in one sitting but in painfully slow creative sentences until finally 'The End' is pecked out at the bottom of a page. Only then can I smile. More often I'm too tired to manage even that.

Okay, so digging coal with a pickax deep in a West Virginia mine might be tougher than digging ideas out of my soul, but ten to one those miners sleep like rocks. Not me.

The clock strikes three a.m., it is blacker than black outside and what am I doing? I am wide-awake and wondering about that tenth chapter. Does the transition work or did it squeeze itself in there all by itself hoping for a fit?

Maybe I'm pondering the third verse of a poem, the rhythm seemed off a hair, or the metaphor in the fourth line was as trite as a Rogers and Hammerstein ditty about Oklahoma.

In any case, the relief at having finished any piece is certainly short-lived. In the middle of the night I am assured of only one thing: the writing never sleeps. No bloody wonder Ann Rice writes about vampires! The light of day seldom brings relief. Invariably, a fresh character appears before I've had my fifth cup of Starbucks.

In fact, one of them is now strolling into my kitchen wearing a floppy red felt hat and an attitude. She saunters over to my near empty coffee pot and drains it into a cup of my good china. Her slurp is so loud it makes the skin on last night's baked chicken start to crawl. Indifferent, she turns in my direction and glares. I'm no rocket scientist, but I detect a certain challenge in her moves, so it is not difficult to figure out what it is she expects from me.

With a deliberate shake of my head, I look away and take a sip of coffee from the chipped garage sale mug sitting on the chipped enamel table in front of me. A few minutes go by before I cut my eyes over to where the new sassy character, this Julia Margaret McKenzie person, has positioned herself on the tile counter top. She is swinging a crossed leg while her overly-mascaraed eyes bore into mine. Her singular look commands me to grant her what she wants.

And what, pray tell, might that be? A life. She wants me to give her a life.

But I'm tired. I don't even want to think about writing. I was too tired to eat last night and I hardly slept. I'm trusting Calgon to take me away from plot twists and characters for a little while. My brain and I need a rest from floppy hat-wearing creatures.

"Get lost, Julia Margaret McKenzie!" My voice bounces off the kitchen walls but it doesn't faze Miz Julia Margaret. She yawns, takes off the ludicrous hat, fluffs her bleached hair with her bejeweled fingers, then slurps again from my bone china cup ... the thin one you can see straight through.

That's it! I squint my eyes and point an accusing finger in her direction. "Just what do you think you're doing? Don't slurp your coffee like that. Sip it. Like a lady."

She looks me in the eye, her haughty attitude literally bulging from her much too tight shocking pink sweater. "Make me," she commands with a smirk.

And those two seductive words are enough to pick my tired butt up and drag it kicking and screaming back to the computer where I peck, peck, peck at the keyboard for yet another day.

It's ain't rocket science, but it beats digging coal with a pickax.