Being a writer means . . .

I am a writer, and that means a number of things, some of them unsettling ( mostly to other people).

As Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies, etc.) once observed, being a fiction writer means living with a lot of invisible people, which means that the writer’s significant other and/or family lives perforce with those invisible people–and with their claims on the writer’s time and attention.

How do we balance this tricky mix?  How do we pay attention, and to whom do we pay it first?