In my case, adulthood itself was not an advance, although it was a useful waymark.

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?

In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently.

True, the name of the product wasn't so great. Kindle? It was cute and sinister at the same time - worse than Edsel, or Probe, or Microsoft's Bob. But one forgives a bad name. One even comes to be fond of a bad name, if the product itself is delightful.

As soon as you start doing that - changing things - it seems self-evident to me that you've entered the world of make-believe. If you pretend that it's true, and use your own name, you are misleading people. Fiction is looser and wilder and sometimes in the end more self-revealing, anyway.

I'm a sucker for interiors and carefully, beautifully filmed people sitting in a big room. My appetites are simple.

A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.