I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

Eddings frames his productivity as the result of an austere, almost monastic routine: rising “at an unholy hour” and finishing a day’s work before sunrise. The second sentence turns self-deprecation into a wry claim about the material conditions of writing—how bodily limitation (a “slightly bad back”) can shape a writer’s habits, pushing him toward early hours, sustained sitting, and disciplined output. The joke also punctures romantic myths of inspiration by crediting a mundane physical constraint for “an enormous contribution,” suggesting that craft and routine, not only genius, underwrite literary achievement.