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Författare av kärleksromaner bloggar om sina äventyr i bokbranschen:

"I work in a cubicle farm, in a sunless, fluorescent office breathing recycled air, the kind of place where everyone gets frequent headaches and no one knows why (the air? the ventilation? the bad ergonomics? the unnatural light? there are too many possibilites to choose from).

It's a badly-run company, with too many layers of management coming up with lousy ideas, leaving the cubicle slaves to shovel the shit, overworked, understaffed, and chided for abysmal morale. I am one of thousands.

I have written on lunch hours, on buses, in hospital waiting rooms, in doctor's offices.
I write longhand, because it's still the most mobile format - I write on scraps of paper, yellowed pieces of binder paper found in a drawer, spiral notebooks lifted from the office supply cabinet (oh, stop, we've all done it) - I have written on stolen breaks, wandering around my office looking for a few minutes of privacy with a door closed, where no one will ask the dreaded question "Whatcha doing?" (I've never found it.)
I know which seat on the commuter train has the wheelwell in the floor, allowing the writer to prop her knee up, angling her notebook away from the passenger in the next seat.
I remember writing an entire short story on the streetcar, scribbling madly, ignoring the queasiness, desperate to get the words out of my head. I have typed everything into a succession of PCs, backing up to floppy disk, carting the disk to work in the vain hope of getting some writing time.

I have tried to get in touch with my muse at 9:30 on a Tuesday night, so stressed I feel like weeping, the house uncleaned, the dishes undone. If I can't write - I'm driving, say - I have perfected the art of writing in my head, storing it up for transcription when I can get my hands on my notebook.The work sells the soul, but the writing restores it. As long as I'm writing, my soul is forgiving of my endless transgressions against her.
It took me longer than you would think to realize that most people don't do all this - that only writers do it. That I'm not actually a worker who writes - I'm a writer who works.
There is a big difference, and the mental shift is not only significant, it's hard. In my case, it wasn't conscious; it bubbled up from somewhere down below over the period of writing my second novel, and actually considering sending it out for publication. If you're going to try to get published, my subconscious said, then you're actually a writer. And my conscious mind said, At last, thank God."