It begins – has always begun – with a blank page, from stretched goatskin to flickering, ticking cursor. What will you say? How will you press the sound of your voice against that page? Can you pin your ideas with words? A quill presses into skin – punctures – fills – the pale feather blushes with iridescent colours – now subtle, now searing. Bleed a filigree of poetry. Life writing. Cut and paste characters, narrative perspectives – would she tell it like that? Can we trust him, this narrator with a dazzle of quicksilver for a tongue? Their story’s all a fiction. Lie still impeccably. Make them talk in euphemism – script a sculpture of slang – slip subtext under the reader’s very nose. In a hundred and forty characters. Jump cut here – line break – make it up. Rewrite it all, in another tense, adding suspense. A crisp flurry of imagery. Return to the figurative. Turn the page – all yours – what will you write?