That Is What We Do. That Is

There's Just This For Consolation: An Hour Here Or There When Our Lives Seem, Against All Odds And Expectations, To Burst Open And Give Us Everything We've Ever Imagined.

The Vestibule Door Opens Onto A June Morning So Fine And Scrubbed Classira Pauses At The Threshold As She Would At The Edge Of A Pool, Watching The Turquoise Water Lapping At The Tiles, The Liquid Nets Of Sun Wavering In The Blue Depths. As If Standing At The Edge Of A Pool She Delays For A Moment The Plunge, The Quick Membrane Of Chill, The Plain Shock Of Immersion.

She Is Overtaken By A Sensation Of Unbeing. There Is No Other Word For It.

Like My Hero Virginia Woolf, I Do Lack Confidence. I Always Find That The Novel I'm Finishing, Even If It's Turned Out Fairly Well, Is Not The Novel I Had In My Mind. I Think A Lot Of Writers Must Negotiate This, And If They Don't Admit It, They're Not Being Honest.

I Seem To Produce A Novel Approximately Once Every Three Years.