Maybe I am revising too slowly. I keep reading over the same parts, now into Chapter 15, and it’s glacial. Or maybe there is some other problem. Last week I was so excited about how well my revising was going that I decided to risk exposing myself to other influences. I went to a well-rated Broadway play (Venus in Fur — amazing!) and read a best-selling novel (The Hunger Games — gripping!). There was a two-hour train ride where I simply sank into revising TJAP, ignoring the many distractions of crying babies, French tourists and self-important backpackers, that made me think this was not as hard as I always thought it was. Maybe I have finally figured out what I am doing!

But today I read what I had been doing, and I felt bored by it. In general, the parts that write themselves, that delight me at the time I am writing them, often seem shoddy and facile on closer inspection in the cold light of Later. And so it is now.