Don’t you get totally absorbed in the books when writing them?
Well, I do… It’s getting absorbed in the work, really, rather than getting absorbed in the world. I focus. When I used to play football, American football, we were calling it ‘in the zone’. It’s a total focus, so that eh… In football, American football, everybody else is suddenly moving half a step slower, almost as in slow motion. Peripheral vision extends. I can see facial twitches. I know who has the ball. I mean, I can see him, it’s almost as if a faint glow comes up, but I can’t hear the crowd. It’s all dead silence, but I can hear the other players breathing, and … it’s a very strange situation.
You get in the zone with the writing and here I am at my desk. My computer, the monitor. And here is a window looking into the side-garden [waving to the left], and over there [waving to the right] is a glass-paint door, looking into the long-garden behind our house.
Now we have had heavy rainstorms and windstorms that drenched everything, that broke branches, were beating bamboo against this window [the left], there had to be bamboo hitting against this window, had broken branches down on the driveway over there [the right]. […] and he never noticed any of it when in the zone with writing.
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