At first, It’s just writing down words, getting from A to B, a clunky miserable slog that makes me feel miserable and worthless, like an unkempt bug-eyed man who scurries in the room, aimlessly moving around, making loud ignorant comments about whatever he notices.

It is minimally better the next go around. Still A to B, still clunky, miserable and worthless, but there with flashes, razor thin, something, an echo, a line across the dull grey sky.

Breathing and forgetting are next, lots of that, drinking too, reflecting and reconsidering. Even this, these words now, are feeling wrong, because I should be doing the sad reflecting. And I’m not. I’m rushing it. That’s the worst, making it the same awful thing at the outset.

And then – good thing I got out of that – there is the crack, a way in, that meaty spark, a thing I was after, sharp and wonderful, until I reach for it and find it gone, never even there. I was drunk or wish I was.

The animal skulks about in the shadows, on the periphery, until it’s a mania of spinning my head, thinking I have something to say, knowing I’m a degenerate. The words are there but it’s still a morass – mole asses! – too much of that, and the drinking is my friend again, and I realize it’s time to give everything up. It never made sense. The drink was to blame. The repercussions are all there is, living the straight and narrow, facing judgement, crying for meaning, needing and almost finding that clear and consistent moral code, finally done with my childish nonsense.

Gone and almost forgotten, I stupidly think it might be time to return, peak and see if that squirrely thing was ever there. And I do. And it was. It is. There are sparks and flames now, as shitty a metaphor as that might be, because I’ve got better things to do. I race after it and can’t stop until I do and realize I was wrong and that drink is to blame.

Time is the thing now, the breathing and forgetting, the drink, yes, too. Until it’s time again, or well past, and it opens just like that, the clunky thing still there, only needing a structural fix, deleting and editing, that on repeat, until there is something, a character more real than I know, a thing with meaning, not flailing and spouting, but sharp and clear, and not so much of that as to make it copy, but the sheen and wet of heavy footsteps bounding off to an end I know not of.

He doesn’t follow Emily up the stairs! He’s too chicken for that. He’s pretending that he will but stops and stares blankly as she vanishes and turns and makes a run for it. He’s free! No, he runs straight into his boss who he has to escort him into the party. He’s doomed and reaches for the first glass of champagne he can lay his hands on.

Anyway, I feel better about the book even if I know it won’t last.