My god, is writing a pain. I mean real writing, like writers do. Like novels and stuff. Frankly I don’t know how they do it. Well, here’s how they do it, so far as I can tell. They write. That’s it. They sit down at the fucking computer, and they write! The only way to do it is to do it. No other way works, apparently. And so – after long dark nights of despair, after fantasies of writing, promises to self about writing, fidgeting and faffing instead of writing, I have (yes, I know) dusted off, metaphorically speaking, the god-damned, hated, shoved-into-a-pile of yellowing printouts, its high-time-you-abandoned-this novel. And made a fresh beginning. It’s one of the things I always promised myself: I will not die before I have published a novel. At this rate I’ll be here till the next millennium. Here – don’t steal this, okay – are the opening pages. The little girl frowns. Cherub lips pursed,
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