Second day in a row I wake up early to take stimulants and work on the novel for so many consecutive hours before calling it quits at around 5 p.m., averaging ten pages of handwritten prose both days, on neither occasion knowing if the work was good or if I could have done more of it or if I should have done less…

Moby Dick is an element that informs the book so I read Moby Dick on the couch for a while in the early evening and then I walk the dog and when I come back I swap Moby Dick for Jim Harrison’s very companionable and softspoken memoir, Off to the Side, which calms me a bit, slows me down, and joins me here on the sofa, in the silence, and assumes the sort of companionship that’s more important than my little book, and that I so desperately and maybe helplessly want for my little book to emulate.