In the early hours of yesterday morning, I began. Although really I should say ‘I continued’, since I’ve decided to use the small amount I wrote in January too. It’s been happening for a while now that when I get into bed, I work on the text in my head, or rather I work on the images, or the mood, of what I want to write, and often I find myself mentally putting it into words. Early yesterday morning I was outlining yet again how I’d continue the story I began in January, when I saw quite clearly that I was going round in circles and getting nowhere; that I was forever thinking, ‘I’ll write it tomorrow,’ the way you might think about beginning a diet or a plan to quit smoking. But today I said: ‘Tomorrow doesn’t exist and it never will. The project won’t happen at this rate. I need to write down what I’m thinking this instant, because when I wake up tomorrow I’ll get tangled up in the thousand things I get tangled up in every day and the text will go on being postponed until it’s time to go to bed and … ’ And although I was already wearing the clothes I sleep in, I turned the computer on – configured to the user who’s a writer – and started to type. I don’t know how it turned out, but when I went to bed seventy minutes later I’d stopped feeling guilty.