Work in Progress

It has been those long seven weeks since I could work at all on my novel in progress, this one for adults. I had left the book at a crucial place. I was afraid, frankly, that it would deny me access. Sometimes all you can write in a day is a scene. This one takes place in 1955, in a hospital for the mentally unwell. The photo above is the Alcatraz kitchen. It was the closest I could come to an institutional shot.

Down the long vat of the hall, the day is a scowl. The...