I’ve been in Austin this week writing with my daughter. We set up our two laptops at opposite ends of her dining room table, stayed tuned for hurricane updates and played with words.

Sam is the newest writer in the family and has a book deadline the end of September. I am here to be a copy editor before she sends her manuscript off to her New York editors.

I think of us like mother and daughter piano players. Or mother and daughter painters with side by side canvases. We share the same passion for the craft even though we have different styles and references. “Who is Damien Rice” I inquire about one of her musical mentions. And she pulls up iTunes to educate me.

We are wordies. Some call us endangered. Words are not given as much respect as they once were. Book contracts are sparse. Books themselves are shorter, adjusting to the shrinkage of readers’ attention spans. Same with newspapers, where my writing comes from, which are skinnier, owing to news junkies lured over to online blogs and 24/7 cable news.

We are wordies. Some call us endangered.

The traditional word form is threatened and yet many people keep at it. My friend Ellen just finished a novel set in Greece. Pam in Mexico is taking notes on the ex-pat community. Sophie is working on a mystery. Jan is writing a tragic memoir about a mutual high school friend.

We write books because we read books. None of us can imagine our world without them. Given an extra hour in a strange town we seek out a book store. We’d never go to bed or take a bath or pack for a trip without a book.

I watch my daughter wrinkle her forehead and scrunch her eyes searching for the right word. Without first googling. Or going to a Thesarus. She scans her own memory to deliver the perfect anecdote or piece of dialogue that will be so good she will stop to applaud herself.

People who would like to write a book think that authors sit at home in their pajamas experiencing daily epiphanies and drinking cold coffee. Except for the epiphanies they are right. Some days you’d rather work at a bank.

Today’s at-home writers need to do more than come up with words. If you have an editor waiting in New York you are also brainstorming marketing ideas before you finishing writing the introduction.

That is because if you are of the lucky few, you will one day have to get out of your pajamas and turn into a hottie intellectual who can dazzle a talk show host who hasn’t read your book. Writers now have to be camera-ready. HD camera ready. I tell Sam she’s lucky to have good cheekbones.

I’m thrilled we share the same world. I imagine her eavesdropping on airport conversations and scribbling dialogue. I expect she’d be more excited to meet a David Sedaris than a Johnny Depp.

She gives me a “hold on there, mother” look and says, “Actually, that would be a toss-up.”

Listen to the World of Wordies Podcast at Another Voice on KRCB-FM

People have been asking me, “How do you like being retired?” They’re just being friendly, not accusing. So, why is my first reaction …. “You talking to me?” like the belligerent Robert DeNiro character in “Taxi Driver.”

“Hey, Susan, how’s retirement” yells my friend George from across the street when I’m walking my dog in downtown Sebastopol. And I’m slightly embarrassed, like he’s asked how’s the new prosthesis working out.

Retired. Me?

I rush to qualify: “Well, of course I haven’t exactly retired, you know,” I sputter. “I quit my newspaper job. But I’m not retired-retired.”
I mean, of course, I’m not playing golf, although nothing against those who do.

How’s it feel to be a lady of leisure, they ask. What leisure? Do not think of me as sitting around. I still wake up in the morning and make lists. I still carry my appointment book. I still have to make money.

Keeping busy, they say.
Filling your time? Do I look like I need time-filling?

I know why I’m so sensitive. It is because my generation basically recoils from the word retired. It makes you sound like what your father did when he quit working at his manufacturing plant and moved to a condo in Florida and tussled with all the other former executives over supervising the landscaping and swimming pool maintenance.

Retired is something you thought you wouldn’t be for a long time. But then you were surprised at turning gray. And turning 50. And 60. And have someone call you grandmother.

But retired sounds so final. Like you’re finished. Done. Wrapped up. Certainly, different.

Writer Sara Davidson worries in her wonderful book “Leap,” that retirement is “a precursor to boredom and death.”

What do you say when you no longer do what you did? Who are you when you longer are who you were?

The transition from being on the clock to off does not happen automatically.
It reminds me of the romantic get-away my husband and I planned one week summers ago. We put kids on various planes, found a house sitter to take care of the vegetable garden and feed the cat and rushed to Mexico for one week’s precious vacation . We fought for the first two days.

Baby Boomers, it is reported, have no intention of fully retiring. More than three-quarters of them plan to work long past the age their parents
got the gold watch. Part of this, I know, is because of the money.

The ads ask: can you afford retirement.
Are you kidding, I answer.

But I think we fear relinquishing the identity which comes with work.
Retirement is what normally happens at the end of your career. I still have a career. I just don’t do it for so much an hour certain days a week in an office. I am a stay-at-home writer. And I may eventually get involved in some good work. And take another French class. And do more yoga.

I bet as more Boomers advance into this period we will start to see a new competitive sport develop. Extreme retiring, we’ll call it. . I retired and became a masters swimmer. I retired and became a medical missionary. I took up the cello. I adopt feral cats.
Perfect Boomer business opportunity: Retirement boot camp.

Some of my friends compliment me on my new relatively relaxed life.
I’m more attentive says my friend Alison as we linger over lunch. “This is normally the time you’d be tapping your watch and saying ‘I have to get back to the office.’”
She tells me I look rested, even younger.

But as we start to leave the restaurant, she can’t resist, saying loudly,
“Wait. Now that you’re retired don’t you want to wrap up the bread in a napkin to take home.”

Listen to the audio version of “Are You Still Somebody?” on the podcast page under Another Voice.