My four-year-old comes shuffling into the kitchen cautiously, because he has a blanket over his head. A muffled giggle warns me before I turn around.

I examine this strange, strange child I bore. He blunders into my hip, backs up a step, and then big brown eyes come out from under the blanket. I blink. He blinks back. With great sincerity, he reassures me.

“Don’ worry, Mama. Is only me.”

I am hard put not to burst out laughing. Of course, he’s young enough not to know what’s funny. But then it strikes me, as it usually does. Something about writing. I get thoughts about writing just about anywhen.

Writing a story’s like seeing a shape under a blanket. You start out describing fingers or toes (depending on which end you like to begin at, ha ha) and discover the monster or the angel piece by piece. The finished product, while amazing in all its nooks and crannies, is never as scary as the covered shape–the shape your eyes may or may not be capable of translating in a way your brain understands.

Even a diehard plotter knows that sometimes, the story takes an unmapped turn, screeching into unfamiliar territory. Shapes under a blanket can be notoriously unreliable. (I was going to make a cheap joke about being in high school here and have decided not to, for all our sakes.) Part of the very special brand of insanity that makes a writer is that little crack in the world egg where the stories crawl through–and straight into our nimble little brains. Ask any writer if they control the stories they tell. You’ll most likely get a burst of nervous, not-very-nice, almost-hysterical laughter.

When people tell me they want to be writers, I mostly just nod and smile. That’s great. Good luck with that. It’s when people tell me, I am a writer and I am incapable of stopping that I sit up and take notice, pour a glass of wine, and lean into the speaker’s personal space.

Tell me about it, I say. Don’t worry. It’s only me. Tell me all about it.

So pity us poor mad writers, maybe. We go around peering under blankets, with characters crawling through our heads. And we’re so hopeless, you know, that we wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Most of the time, that is. When I get a little closer to that looming March deadline I might not be so sure…