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I think most of us are familiar with the phrase "busman's holiday": a holiday or vacation during which you do what you do for the rest of the year (so the busman has to drive the family to their destination, the lion tamer has to take the kids to the movies, the chef has to cook the holiday goose).  It's usually used to imply that the holiday wasn't very good, since it wasn't a break from the norm.  Well, I'd like to propose a new phrase for our universal lexicon.  The writer's holiday: a holiday or vacation during which you do what you do for the rest of the year, only more so.

Most of the writers I know write every day.  Not "every day except weekends, holidays, and birthdays."  Every day.  Many of us still have day jobs, which means that the main difference between Saturday and Monday is when you get to sit down at that keyboard and start hammering away.  On a weekday, I usually get between two and four hours of good writing time in, depending on what else is going on (and how annoying my cats are).  On weekends and vacation days, I can manage between five and nineteen hours of good writing time.  (Once, when under deadline, I managed to keep writing for twenty-seven hours straight.  I do not recommend this, as the amount of caffeine it required was probably medically unwise.)

Have you ever wondered about the identity of that guy sitting in the International House of Pancakes at eight in the morning, hunched over his laptop and hammering away like he's trying to save his work before the apocalypse?  How about the woman on the bus with the notepad on her knee, scribbling away and glancing around like she's doing something wrong?  The odds are good that they're writers, trying to steal more minutes from the day.  (I do both these things, and am, in fact, somewhat infamous for cropping up in coffee shops at oh-my-God-o'clock in the morning during major conventions, cheerfully tapping away like it isn't an hour never meant to be seen by beast nor man.  As a hint, if you ever stumble over such an apparition, beware.  For I am perky from six AM onward.)  Writers don't recognize days of the week or national holidays the way normal people do.  Normal people think "three days of freedom."  We think "I bet I can edit sixty pages before I have to go back to work."

Pity the people planning holidays or vacations around a writer.  "Honey, what did you want to do for Christmas this year?"  "I was thinking chapter nine."  "I meant with the family."  "Oh, uh...I don't know.  Can we mail the kids someplace where they'll be too far away to hear?"  Seriously, we're difficult to live with.

Stephen King once said that he told people he took his birthday off because he didn't want them to think that he was some sort of freak (I'm paraphrasing here; if you want the details, look up On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, one of my favorite books).  Well, I've given up the illusion that people don't think I'm some sort of freak.  I've spent birthday parties doing edits, I've gone to dinner parties on the understanding that I'd be retreating into the guest room to make my word count, and I've been known to offer the people sitting in front of me on airplanes cash money not to lean their seats back.  (If you ever wind up in front of me on a plane, please be aware that the current going rate is $20 for a two hour flight, $40 for the first three hours of anything longer than that.  I don't really carry more than that in available bribes at any given time.)

Because I work for an organization that closes down between Christmas and New Year's, I am one of the few adults I know who still gets a "Winter Break."  My friends who aren't writers look at this jealously, muttering about the fabulous vacation I'm certain to take...at least until they find out that I'm planning to spend my break sitting in a friend's kitchen in Seattle, trying to get ahead on my word counts.  Then they shake their heads and look a little bit ashamed of me...while all my writer friends are suddenly giving me the jealous looks and muttering about how much they could get done if they could disappear for a week and a half.

Forget the busman's holiday.  I'm telling you, it's the writer's holiday that people need to be watching out for.  Oh, well; at least we're quiet.

Check out Seanan McGuire's comic, How to Write a Book.