The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. It's just me, my thoughts and the steadiness of language. It's a time when the words may flow in some extended moment of clarity - when I know exactly what I feel and exactly how I want to express it. If it's an especially good night, ambivalence can have a crystalline image. The right details rest at my fingertips.
Mysteries distill into metaphors.
Words become colors and I start to paint. I've written elegies. I've written long, disturbing personal inventories. These are the years when we draft a final copy of what our life is to be. Prune now or be metaphysically ugly.