Saturday. Trapped in my novel all day. I push myself into it like a pumpkin forced under water. When I finally manage to submerge, I can’t stay there. Everything is wrong. The characters do whatever they want. The dialogue is either flat or heavy-handed. I can’t get it within five centimeters of right.

But that still isn’t the biggest tragedy. That comes in the evening. Revision. I have to read the whole thing back to myself. And not once. At least ten times — until it’s readable for someone other than me.

Why did nobody ever tell me that the main part of writing is endlessly reading yourself?

If I had known that, I would never have started. It’s like watching the top league your whole life and then deciding to play at forty. Absurd. And yet here I am.

Before midnight, completely wrecked, I check my emails. God must be watching over me. Nicholas writes. Not that one — mine. My writing buddy, with whom I’ve been batting back and forth everything we’ve just written since our larval writing days. He sends two new texts.

A noir piece set on a construction site. For a moment I resent what it does to me. Especially since I’m building myself right now. Let’s hope we don’t find a skeleton in our apartment building as well. The next text is linked to the first one. And it’s even better. It makes me freeze, even though I’m wrapped in a heated blanket while reading it.

In Nicky’s texts, bodies feel immediate. And not just dead ones. I wish I could do that too. One day. Though I also feel a flicker of schadenfreude. There are things I simply do much better. Like introspection. For now.

After all that, I can’t fall asleep. Other authors start visiting me. I wrestle with pillows and blankets, and with every turn something appears that I’ve read in recent days. Funny blogs, touching images of male friendship, and one very unusual skating competition. I’d take you there with me immediately, if I could.

Still, I can’t sleep. As if my body were made of letters instead of cells. They sulk, badly arranged. It needs something else. Or rather, someone else. At two in the morning, salvation arrives. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie comes to mind. I put it on in Italian. Because that’s simply the best way to listen to it. I understand only half — I’m really groggy by then — but it doesn’t bother me at all.

On the contrary. In the end, it is Turko Argalia who finally rocks me to sleep.

Thank you to the authors who occasionally come to my rescue.