This is despite several people having read earlier drafts and apparently liked it. I started _The Bone Clocks_ yesterday, and it's very good so far, and now I am having a crisis of why don't I write like David Mitchell. I have an Alice Munro collection in my suitcase, and I have decided the better part of wisdom is not to even open it right now, or I really will fall into the depths of writerly despair.
My conscious mind thinks the opening's not bad, though. But I think I've read it way too many times to be objective. How does one *not* get bored by one's own work, if one keeps looking at it, over and over? I'm reading from Bodies in Motion later today, and I was looking at it again, choosing something to read, and I think it's quite good, actually -- taking a break of some years from the stories seems to have helped.
*****
"Maya hurried through the cobbled streets of Old Town, lifting her embroidered sari skirts out of the muck as she went. The stars were emerging, faintly visible through the shimmering screen of the dome overhead. There were no signs of the battles far beyond, the great ships contending for control of their sectors of the Charted Worlds. The skies above Kriti were quiet these days, quiet enough that one might put aside the prospect of war, at least for long enough to finish ones studies."
*****
Okay, tea. Tea will help.