Fifty years ago, when I was 22, I never thought of death. Today, it is ever on my mind.

The Stoic philosopher Seneca advised us to live each day as though it were our entire life. The point being that today may in fact see us draw our final breath. So live each day purposely and fully.

I may not wake up tomorrow. I may not ever fall asleep again.

When I look back over my life, if I have any regrets, it is that I wasted so much time. There’s a time and place to enjoy the sweetness of doing nothing. But the time I wasted often brought no sweetness whatsoever. Such a pity.

Youth reeks of immortality. Until age reveals the folly. Seneca, in his work On The Shortness Of Life, wrote that life is long enough if you know how to use it. The problem for most of us is that we don’t learn how to use it until so little is left to us.

I look at the actuarial table and the median of my parents’s ages when they died. It is sobering, very sobering, to realize I have 13 years remaining on the planet. Of course it could be more. And it could be less. It is the less part that is even more sobering.

As an independent author/publisher, I have to do it all myself, or pay someone to do it for me. That’s because I am both the writer and the publishing house. One spends either time or money. If I have no money, then I have to spend time to get my books published and advertised.

I am a decent writer. I am a lousy marketer.

Daily I am inundated with marketing advice on the latest and greatest method to become a bestselling author or the ways whereby I can make piles of money.

I delete most of the emails without reading them. A sucker is born every minute, PT Barnum supposedly said. I’ve been a sucker. But not today. And not tomorrow. The sucker has died.

Because I keep seeing glints of light off of the blade of the scythe, because I keep hearing it scraping on the floor, I know the grim guy is lurking. And more and more I find myself nodding to Asimov’s answer to the question, “What would you do if you knew today was your last day?” He supposedly answered, “I’d write a little faster.”

From here on out, I am going to be writing a little faster. No one can write my books and stories. Only I can. I have enough ideas for several lifetimes. Thank goodness ideas have never been a problem for me. They are everywhere and they are just waiting to be turned into stories.

So I had best get writing. I am not going to spend time obsessing over marketing. Because that isn’t going to get my books written. Pushing the pencil is what’s going to get them written. My heirs can deal with the marketing. After all, they’ll have 70 years after my death to figure out how to capitalize on my words.

How many books and stories can I write in 13 years? I don’t know. Hugh B. Cave had 800 stories published in 10 years. That is a hell of a lot of writing. But he had to pay the rent.

I don’t have that pressure. Thank goodness.

If I were to write 1000 finished words a day, every day, I would produce 352,000 words in a year. Enough for seven novels. Seven novels a year for 13 years is 91 novels written in the remaining years of my life. That will make a tiny dent in my idea pile. But a tiny dent is better than no dent.

And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, something I write will provide someone enough pleasure that they will remember me after I’m gone.

I guess I had best get cracking. I think I hear that grim old guy chuckling. Seems to me it’s game on.

tall   black-cowled black-robed
red eyes peering   from the eternal void

not today I say   he smiles and says   but soon