Straddling Time Zones

These days, I've been thinking a lot about how writers work, and how we perpetually inhabit multiple time zones: the past, present and future. To keep ourselves working, we must always be imagining and proposing new projects to our publishers (the future). We are also busily researching, writing and working hard on a current writing project (the present). And finally, we are enthusiastically promoting recently released books that appear new to our reading audience, but actually feel old to us — possibly written up to two years ago (the past). What's it like straddling the time zones? Exciting, rewarding, hectic, and a little bit crazy. But that's the nature of the job, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!