Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo is magnificently slender. He is exactly six feet tall.

(The Subject is six feet one inch tall.)

He dresses in an elegantly feminine manner.

(The Subject finds this analysis ‘patronising in the extreme’.)

Not as a woman, but as a fine-boned man who enjoys wearing feminine-style clothes (tight, white jeans, pretty, pastel-coloured shirts, a bright yellow mackintosh, cinched at the waist with a little belt).

(The Subject finds the above description ‘odd – disquieting, even borderline disturbing’.)

He is a pretty boy.

(The Subject says, ‘What?! Does she seriously expect to get away with this?!)

He has knock-off designer sunglasses pushed up on his head.

(The Subject’s Tom Ford ‘Dimitry’ TF334 [£181.33] sunglasses were purchased at the Cardiff branch of John Lewis – 2-/0-/2018 – with a gift card on the occasion of his birthday. He has all the relevant documentation to prove it.

The date has been partially obscured to avoid identity theft.

The Subject wishes it to be known that he laughed – out loud – at the rich irony of the above statement.)

He is sporting a pair of lemon-coloured loafers. His eyebrows are nothing short of sublime.

(The Subject insists that he has never groomed or plucked his eyebrows – or managed them in any way – and that the above sentence represents a personal slur ‘cleverly couched in the language of a compliment’.)

No. No. This is ridiculous. It simply isn’t workable.

Not only am I incredibly tense re the (possible, future) want of italics and the potential horror of AMERICAN TYPEWRITER undermining the calm fluidity of the text, but Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo’s perpetual interruptions (in smug legalese) and his hectoring, self-righteous tone are completely intolerable. Everything is contested. Everything is contrary.

And I need full access. I demand it! Why this sudden reticence on Gyasi’s part? What does it mean? Why can’t he just pull his head in and comply – roll up his sleeves and muck in – like everybody else? Wang Shu is grumpy – lumpen – self-determined – hard-boiled – borderline obnoxious – but even she has been a dream to work with by comparison (yes, always on the phone to her Chinese agent complaining about the number of words she and Ying Yue have in the text as a whole, but generally very open – very good-natured).

It’s the pervasive atmosphere of ill will seeping into every line that I’m really struggling with. And I find myself over-compensating – over-thinking – being excessively complimentary and sycophantic – granting Gyasi favours that none of the other characters get (he has lovely eyebrows, sure, but do I really need to make ‘a thing’ out of them? And this ludicrous middle name ‘Chance’ which he insists upon because it helps to identify his page on Instagram). I’m nervous around him! I’m tentative, which (I firmly believe) is severely deleterious to the free-spirited atmosphere that my unconscious mind/muse/blah demands as a prerequisite to true, unencumbered creativity.

Enough is enough.

I am henceforth kicking Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo out of the novella (as I type this I notice – with a slight smirk – how spellcheck repeatedly changes Gyasi’s surname from Ebo to Ego. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?).