Pre- and Post-Partum Book Depression

Time stops when you are writing a book, at least when I am. Only one day counts, looms and threatens and that is the day the manuscript must be delivered. There is no present, but only getting ahead, progress, limping along to the next page and the next. This is not healthy, this is not recommended. Living outside -- or deeply inside -- your own writing is like living in a dark, airless, friendless cave. Living in the future while negating one's present is for fools. And in this fashion, I have learned lately that I am surely one of the most foolish.