09 May 1995
The middle of the manuscript has been lying to me. Middles are where books reveal whether they have bones or only posture. Mine has been standing in a good coat and hoping no one would ask it to lift anything heavy.
I am cutting the passages that explain why people are wounded and keeping the passages where they behave badly because of the wound. This seems obvious written down. On the page it feels like removing floorboards while still expected to cross the room.
The agent is gone, and with her the useful fantasy that someone else was carrying the professional shape of the thing. There is relief in the loss, which I am not proud of. No appointments. No reports. No brisk voice telling me where we are. Only the pages and the question: are they alive?
Some are. More than I feared. A scene between Ruth and her brother has a pulse now that I have stopped making them discuss the past and allowed them to quarrel over a parcel neither will open. Objects are excellent. They keep secrets without speeches.
So today I liked writing again. Not my prospects. Not the industry. Writing. The old dangerous pleasure of moving a sentence until it holds.