Sometimes, the flame is steadier. For a happy span of time I work a few hours every day with a clear mind. I don’t have to strain my mind, there’s nothing for me to invent. There’s material galore, in heaps, in piles of paper covered with writing. I link up fragments, fill out joints, smooth over bumps. The sober craft of working and reworking makes me feel my growing abilities and capabilities. I am pumped so full of faith and confidence that I soon burden myself with other work—work that brings in cash. I then spend the money right and left: it is a light currency and I’m on top. I feel I can do the impossible, I dare to make all sorts of ambitious plans, I accept obligations I cannot honor—and I soon find myself so entangled in promises and agreements, contracts, coercions, warnings, dunnings, final notices, that I have to apply all my time and energy somehow to complete things I have hastily begun, finally to tackle things that are long overdue, further to delay things I have frivolously promised . . .

most of these matters drag on forever; I dare not even think about my book. And the weeks wear on, the months, the years . . .