Even though one of my strengths is ideation, as a writer, I still worry that my current work-in-progress (whatever it happens to be) will also be my last.  I worry that inspiration works more like the lottery than like an assembly line.  It seems to me that so many other writers have one hundred million ideas for stories, poems, and projects while I have one— whatever I happen to be working on.

And what if that next idea never comes?

It makes me nervous.

I wonder if musicians ever worry if this song will be their last one, or if an artist thinks, What if I don’t have another painting in me?  Is this a common worry among creative types?

E.L. Doctorow has this famous quote, which goes, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

As Anne Lamott once pointed out, “This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”