I think my discouragement over the progress of Appearances (am currently stalled on manuscript page 30) is going global. Probably doesn't help that one of the things I'm currently reading is Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence. Out of Sheer Rage is about Dyer's inability to write a book about D.H. Lawrence. It's exhilarating and depressing at the same time. I'm reading it after just having finished Dyer's latest, Zona, which is a blow-by-blow account of, and improvizations around, Tarkovsky's great film Stalker. Zona is likely the most profound personal response to a film that I've ever read. Just as Out of Sheer Rage is likely the greatest account of how writers torture themselves.

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