With Acting, You Have To Depend On

I'm Still Very Much In The Apprentice Stage Of Writing. I Read Somewhere That You Need To Write A Million Words Before You Know What You're Doing - So I'm Headed That Way, But I'm Nowhere Near There.

It Took My Breath Away, That Evening. If You've Ever Dreamed That You Walked Into Your Best-loved Book Or Film Or Tv Program, Then Maybe You've Got Some Idea How It Felt: Things Coming Alive Around You, Strange And New And Utterly Familiar At The Same Time; The Catch In Your Heartbeat As You Move Through The Rooms That Had Such A Vivid Untouchable Life In Your Mind, As Your Feet Actually Touch The Carpet, As You Breathe The Air; The Odd, Secret Glow Of Warmth As These People You've Been Watching For So Long, From So Far Away, Open Their Circle And Sweep You Into It.

I Read A Lot. I Always Have, But In Those Two Years I Gorged Myself On Books With A Voluptuous, Almost Erotic Gluttony. I Would Go To The Local Library And Take Out As Many As I Could, And Then Lock Myself In The Bedsit And Read Solidly For A Week. I Went For Old Books, The Older The Better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean Tragedies, A Dusty Translation Of Laclos - So That When I Finally Resurfaced, Blinking And Dazzled, It Took Me Days To Stop Thinking In Their Cool, Polished, Crystalline Rhythms.

I Weaned Myself On The Nostalgia Equivalent Of Methadone (less Addictive, Less Obvious, Less Likely To Make You Crazy): Missing What I Had Never Had.

I Am Not Good At Noticing When I'm Happy, Except In Retrospect. My Gift, Or Fatal Flaw, Is For Nostalgia. I Have Sometimes Been Accused Of Demanding Perfection, Of Rejecting Heart's Desires As Soon As I Get Close Enough That The Mysterious Impressionistic Gloss Disperses Into Plain Solid Dots, But The Truth Is Less Simplistic Than That. I Know Very Well That Perfection Is Made Up Of Frayed, Off-struck Mundanities. I Suppose You Could Say My Real Weakness Is A Kind Of Long-sightedness: Usually It Is Only At A Distance, And Much Too Late, That I Can See The Pattern.