083/365 11/12/2025

How do we open a novel? What considerations must be made to compel the reader from one sentence to the next? To continue, paragraph after paragraph? To feel the book’s weight in their hands (because the book should be in their hands) and think, Yes. This is right and correct and I will keep going? Do we start at sunrise? Sunset? Rain or shine? Squall at sea? English countryside? What about a woman bereft? A woman bereft and feeling brittle and drinking tea from a filigreed cup because she believes women bereft and brittle can soothe themselves with tea? See her hands tremble? It’s barely noticeable to the untrained eye, but we are trained. We can zoom in. Bring our perspective closer and closer until the cup’s gold rim is like the ocean’s horizon, and we watch it tremble ever so slightly as if the earth were quaking some miles below.