For Christmas last year, my twenty-something kids gave me a hand-painted coffee cup. It was lovely and colorful—purple with a red heart. On the bottom when you tilt the cup up to finish your last dregs of espresso, “I’m a writer” is scrawled in bold red. Sweet or sarcastic?

I’ve worked as a medical, eLearning and erotica editor, a marketing/ad writer, a copywriter, a tech writer, a creative writing teacher, an admin, a substitute teacher, a waitress, a sales-clerk, an actress, a model, a tour guide through Betty Crocker kitchens, ad infinitum. The list is as long as the many excuses I have to not write a book. When I swear bitterly about wasting time on the very-necessary day jobs, my kids tell me sit and write something, then.

It’s becoming an integral ingredient of my personality to threaten to write and never do it. My hands, my feet, my…