All these years I've been writing about books, and about writers, and just writing. And now I look at it, so very little has disturbed the way I think about all these things.

What I mean is that I've not spent much time thinking about these things outside of the ways in which I was raised or trained to think about them.

Even this is not true, because part of how I wanted to train myself to consider the work of writers and what they wrote was to stretch and pull at the meaning of things. I wanted to yank great hanks of furry truths and understanding and throw them on the floor and then comb through them until I or someone else found bits of knowing or guesses we could share with each other.

And even that doesn't really start to get to it. Not really.

This is a disgrace. Several things occur in the deepest, most desperate parts of my thinking to bring me to this point.

The first is reading an old Olive Senior book and remembering much older ones and thinking about how much I love her neat, clean, accurately pitched story-teller's voice and the clarity of the pictures in her narrative. I always like a good fairytale.

Another thing is a succession of utterly dispiriting conversations in which I realise, with no small amount of alacrity, that I have not simply been preaching to the choir, I have been screaming at the harp.

The understanding that was thrust upon me is that I am not very good at explaining the world inhabited by people who like books, or the one writers live in, or the way living inside a book is not nearly as easy as non-readers might like to think.

When you are not part of a certain world, no matter how dull or ordinary you think it, know this: no one outside of it really gets it. I don't get particle physics, sewing or pest control. You can try to explain these things to me - you won't be the first - but I think they are out of my reach.

I found out how bad I was at describing the world I inhabit because, in the recent past, a few people have said awful things to me. They were not personal or intentional, but the gist is that all the things I thought I'd been saying - all the things I've been trying to say - were, in a word, kaput.

I know a few people who live and die by their writing. I know a lot more writers. But the ones who give it everything and hope for something in return number in the fingers-on-hands department.

My suspicion is it is the same for all people serious about what they do. Only a small number of them really get to soft underbelly of their work. Others repair or polish the exterior. Some do some skilled work supporting the bits that hold everything together, perhaps.

But there is this terrifying, delicate, hideous part that only a few know. I have friends in education who deal with that part. And those who do that for communications, environmental impact work, accounting and medicine.

The difference between them and writers is that no one speaks off-handedly of their accounting 'dreams.'

Writing is real and often less than thrilling work. Writers are r