Back to carving out a writing routine. Which means getting up at a reasonable time (i.e. before everyone in my household, including the dog), parking my butt on any available chair, and starting, screw all the distractions. As James Baldwin writes, “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”

Oddly enough, when I think of endurance, I think about this Arctic explorer that Rebecca Solnit writes about in The Faraway Nearby. Waking up after a blizzard, he realises he's trapped in his shelter encased in snowdrift and ice. Without a tool, he shits, shapes his excrement into a tool, waits for it to freeze, and then chips his way out. Free, he can only crawl, as his foot is frozen solid, and he has to crawl for three hours to get to his traveling companions. So when I sit in front of a notepad, I will think of that man waiting for his shit to freeze, and I will chip away at the blank page before me, word by fucking word.

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