14 December 1995
The days have gone flat. Not tragic. Flat. That is worse, in some ways, because tragedy at least has architecture. This is a low ceiling pressing down on every morning.
I sit at the desk and move paper from one side to the other. The manuscript looks as if someone else wrote it during a period of violent confidence. I can remember being that person, but memory is not access.
After the agent business I expected anger to carry me. It did for a while. Anger is excellent kindling and poor fuel. Now there is mostly a dry internal click, like a gas ring that will not catch.
People are kind in December, which is inconvenient. They ask what I am working on. I say "a revision" because it sounds cleaner than "the slow erasure of my own nerve." They nod. Everyone colludes in the fiction that a writer not writing is only between drafts.
I am not giving up. I am merely reporting that the engine is cold and the road is dark and I have stopped pretending the moon is a lamp put there for my benefit.