The Art of Looking Sideways

"... the larger part of the labour of an author in composing his work is critical labour; the labour of shifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing."

This is T.S. Eliot, quoted on page 424 of The Art of Looking Sideways, the final present of perhaps five dozen presents that I now wrap so that it might be slipped beneath the tree. This Alan Fletcher compendium of ideas—visual and other—is as extraordinary in its way as the ladybird I found this morning and photographed against a window leaned upon by snow.

We must, as writers, seek our own path, our own stories. It is the only way.