In one of those Mobius strips of illogic, I have been telling myself I’m a crap writer, and won’t let myself start writing until the art arrives. I have told myself I can’t write until it’s perfect, and then observed, over and over, that I’m obviously not a writer because, look, I haven’t written anything. I keep arriving at the conclusion that writing anything is better than writing nothing– not just a little better, far better, infinitely better. And I am suddenly struck dumb by the critical importance of bankers’ hours and mundane deadlines. Anais Nin might not have picked up a pen until she was shaken to her core by a poetic seizure but I, blank, staring, disheartened I, might be saved by humdrum obligations. Outline the book by the end of August, even if it’s a mediocre outline. So that I can write a terrible, imperfect, actual draft by the end of the year.