Finishing what I started.

Reading stuff I wrote a while ago and discovering that it’s not bad at all.

It’s a craft that doesn’t depend on one’s looks, age, physical health, or even mental health; some of the most cuckoo people I know are fairly decent writers, and some of the sanest people I know are just hopeless at it.

You can be a very-late-in-life success with it.

Adjectives. Boy, do I love a good adjective, especially made-up ones.

Making up adjectives, then.

Slipping into “the zone,” which I think is how every writer describes it. Time and space evaporate; you’re in a trance of sorts.

Knowing my limits (e.g. I cannot seem to write fiction, much as I’d like to. Perhaps this just takes practice, in the same way playing an instrument or drawing takes practice).

E-mail. There isn’t much about the internet that I like, but email is one of the greatest things to happen in my lifetime. I had always been an avid letter- and note-writer prior to the emergence of the web, and knowing I can write and receive letters instantly and electronically has never, ever stopped being exciting to me.

Bringing a good idea to fruition instead of letting it fade away in my mind.

Avoiding it as much as possible. I will wash and scour the inside of my refrigerator, diligently scrub my bathroom floorboards with a soapy toothbrush, water and fertilize my plants, organize my many books into genres and then alphabetical categories, spend hours labouring over a Mediterranean lentil soup, silently agonize over whether Prince Harry is a prick or a very damaged soul, flip through photos of myself as a baby, brush my sweet little cat, rearrange my sofas and then put them back again, try on some high-heeled shoes I haven’t worn since 2007, study online maps of Great Britain, re-read George Orwell’s very underrated “Keep The Aspidistra Flying,” and administer myself a violent mineral-oil enema before I can make myself sit down and write. Which, eventually, I do, because I don’t have a choice.