It can be painful to write a book. Particularly when you’ve stepped out of your business and holed up in a cabin like Earnest Hemmingway. It’s all or nothing, Baby: everyone knows that’s how you get the job done. But now you’ve got carpal tunnel syndrome because you’ve been typing the same three sucky pages over and over again for the last six weeks. Some days they read like a VCR user’s manual; the next, the musings of a schizophrenic. To make matters worse, you’ve got chilblains because the heat is out, again, and you can’t afford an oil delivery. Not since your disgruntled spouse cut you off. Which means you’ve got to drag your carcass off that chair, grab the axe leaning against the door, brave the coyotes and the snowdrifts, and go chop yourself a cord of wood. Which is sort of a relief, when you think about it, because you can’t write a goddamned thing to save your life anyway. You might as well do something useful.