There is a point in the evening when coffee becomes dishonest.
The cup says work.
The clock suggests otherwise.
I have ignored this distinction many times.
Writers are good at pretending the day has not ended simply because the document remains open.
One more paragraph.
One more page.
One more attempt at the sentence that has already survived six attempts and is beginning to look tired.
Sometimes this works.
Some nights are generous.
The room becomes quiet, the words arrive, and midnight passes without asking permission.
Other nights, the work is finished long before the writer admits it.
I am learning to notice the difference.
Slowly.
Coffee encourages negotiation.
A glass of whisky does not.
Perhaps this is why I occasionally prefer it at the end of a long day.
Not during the work.
After.
The notebook is closed.
The document saved.
The desk remains exactly as disorganised as it was ten minutes earlier, but this is now tomorrow’s problem.
A small glass.
Something old enough to have developed patience.
No ice.
Usually.
I sit.
This is not a ritual.
Calling something a ritual is often the fastest way to make it exhausting.
It is simply a way of marking the distance between working and no longer working.
Writers are not always good at that distance.
A story follows you into the kitchen.
Characters continue conversations while you brush your teeth.
A structural problem waits beside the bed with the persistence of someone trying to sell insurance.
The mind does not close when the laptop does.
But it can be encouraged to lower the volume.
The whisky helps.
So does music.
So does looking out of a window and allowing nothing useful to happen for a while.
Especially that.
I used to feel guilty about evenings like this.
There was always more work.
There is always more work.
Five finished books have not changed this.
If anything, they have made the problem worse.
There are notebooks now.
Questions.
Cities.
People who appeared briefly and have since become suspiciously difficult to forget.
Another story is already making noise somewhere.
I know better than to ask it what it wants.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the glass is almost empty.
The desk can wait.
The characters can wait.
Even the unanswered questions can wait.
They will still be there tomorrow.
They are very reliable that way.
I finish the last glass of the evening.
Then I turn off the light.
— D. Vaen