I just spent an hour typing a new page into my novel while sitting in my underwear on the edge of my bed. I’m in bare feet, it’s ten degrees out, and there’s no heat in my bedroom. My skin is freezing. But my story is set on an island near Cuba where it’s eighty-five degrees in the shade, so I’m warm as a fetus . . . in my mind. My feet, however, are suing my brain for negligent affliction of frostbite and they want an immediate divorce. I’m hoping my heart will step in and adjudicate the matter, but it’s too busy being happy about the page I wrote. Sometimes writing is a form of abuse most pleasurable.