Writing a novel is, of course, a mad undertaking.  It begins with an effervescent, glimmering vision of perfection, which sets the writer off on her ink-stained quest, assured that THIS time she will reproduce the vision exactly, and as scintillatingly as it first appeared. This mirage is quickly followed by the mossy-toothed skull of doubt, and then long months of slog, wherein the writer is often only propelled forward by a dogged sense of duty, and fatalism.  In other words — we keep following the sentences, one after mediocre one, in the hopes of landing somewhere, if not glimmering and effervescent, then at least reasonably well appointed. We also keep going because, really, we don’t do anything else even remotely well and if we we don’t write about what’s bothering us, we tend to be even more annoying to live with (my Best Beloved assures me) than we are when we’re embedded in slog.