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Back home from Berlin, my vacation buzz is fading fast. I'm back at work, trying to nail together the thematic climax of a novella while fending off the attentions of two needy cats and picking up the threads of everyday life -- tax forms, a car that needs its annual maintenance check, grocery shopping -- you know the drill. At least I've got work to keep me busy; it beats the alternative.

For me, writing tends to be an obsessive process, coming in wild bursts punctuated by introspective silence. It leaks out of the time allocated for it and makes a sticky mess of my time management. Some other authors have apparently figured out a way to compartmentalize, but I don't work that way, and when I'm approaching the end of a project I tend to wander around in an absent haze, trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together in my head (or, if necessary, carve new ones to slot into the holes left in the puzzle -- after all, the pieces are all hand-made). I don't mumble to myself or trip over my own shoes, but I gather I'm quite bad company when I've got my head stuck in the engine compartment of a balky story; I can have entire conversations and not remember a word of them afterwards.

(My wife is forgiving; the cats, less so.)