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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. Writers as diverse and excellent as Fitzgerald and John Irving and Bret Ellis have written novels from detailed outlines, but I’m not of that school. Irving once told me he wrote the last chapter first. I interviewed E.L. Doctorow in 1984, for Vogue of all publications, right before or right after Bright Lights was published, and I will never forget what he said, which was that for him writing a novel was like driving across country at night: you can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. It’s not a perfect analogy because it begs the question of a map—this was way before GPS. But I am of that school of novelists. I have a general sense of direction, and with luck momentum. I think about Hemingway’s dictum that you should stop the day’s writing while you know your next few moves. Whereas tomorrow I’m really not sure. But I’ve faced down three or four mornings like that in the last month, sometimes sitting for three or four hours not sure what to do next, and if I hadn’t pledged these two months to the sole task of writing this novel I would have got up and some point and said it’s not coming today, but I didn’t because I’ve made a vow to do at least a thousand words a day and eventually sometime in the afternoon I’ve always broken through. As I’m hoping I will tomorrow. Today’s February 2nd so I’m just over halfway through my arbitrary self-imposed writing retreat. And I’m kind of exhilarated that it’s been going well, going forward every day, and kind of afraid to articulate that, out of a superstitious fear that it will stop flowing. I really don’t know what Chapter 13 will be right now. Though it is my lucky number, so maybe I shouldn’t worry.