Yesterday, after I'd finished hammering and denting my rereading memoir-in-progress into the rough facsimile of a book, I swallowed hard and sent a sample chapter to an agent. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've never had any dealings with agents; and at the moment the experience feels a bit like used-car shopping--a mixed sensation of optimism and doom.

Speaking of shopping, today I have to go Christmas shopping again. Blah. But I can't put it off because snow is forecast for the rest of the week. Maybe I'll also manage to get started on my Millbank essay. Unlike my Elizabeth Bowen piece, which took me 5 years to write, I think this essay will be one of those "pour itself onto the page" situations. How cerebral can one get about a horrible yet adhesive novel? I foresee an all-emotion-all-the-time compositional experience.

In the meantime, here's the quotation I think I'll be using as the memoir's epigraph. Surely you won't be surprised to learn that it's from DC.

When I think of it, the picture always arises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

                                                   --Charles Dickens, David Copperfield