February is the Cruelest Month
Some friends came over for dinner on Saturday, one a writer finishing a novel, who didn’t ask any questions about my novel or my schedule. The last thing he wanted to talk about was writing and I don’t blame him. Another friend, visiting form the city, said he felt sorry for me, isolated out here in the winter—he knew Anne had been in Florida all last week. I tried my best to convince him there was no need to feel bad for me, that I was actually having a good time and glad to be writing full time.
Comments
Finished Chapter 12 today, after two days, which represents great progress, but tomorrow morning faced with that especially blank page, trying to decide on a whole new mise-en-scène, a new way forward. I have a pretty good idea of where I’m going in general, but fiction is about specifics, about texture and voice and character, and this is a novel with multiple points of view, and I don’t seem capable of outlining, don’t really believe in it, because I think the story has to arise out of the prose. 
I’ve been out in Bridgehampton writing for three weeks, making steady progress on this new nameless novel. This has been my inevitable practice with each book, to hole up somewhere for a couple of months, usually in the winter months. Back in ‘89 when I was writing Brightness Falls I borrowed George Plimpton’s house in Sagaponack, then, the next year, James Salter’s house in Bridgehampton. There were very few Hamptons winter residents then, and it felt really remote out here, which was what I wanted. If you really needed company there was Bobby Vans, with a steady contingent of bar flies. 
1. Drink less, but better. I don’t necessarily expect to keep this one, but I like to make it every year, and at the end of the year I can tell myself I’m batting 500; even if I don’t drink less, I do tend to drink better as I learn more and as the older wines in my cellar reach maturity. And it’s my firm belief that the better the wine, the less it hurts you in the morning.