Freedom of the city

Been writing all day, with breaks for coffee, walking about staring into mid-air, checking on the passage - or otherwise - of John Howard's pathetic refugee legislation, writing some more, researching online, Brand New Heavies on the headphones (I know that dates me, but so does all my working music), talking out loud to myself, poring over texts, and now cooking risotto.
Mostly I'm in Venice, in the Ghetto. Lost in memories of the ironwork around windows, empty squares, sea mist, dark churches, saints' bones, smells of fish and seaweed, onions and coffee in the air. Except I'm there in the 17th century, in a sunlit printing workshop, with a young character called Isabella.
Writing is freedom, too, you see.

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily.
Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.
~ Virginia Woolf