Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one-third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don’t think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips, and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage!

Hilary Mantel (Giving up the Ghost)

I had to turn to the dictionary for persiflage: ‘Light or frivolous manner of discussing a subject.‘ Guilty as charged.

Hilary Mantel is one of the writers I loved back in the early nineties, when she produced some truly wonderful books such as Fludd, and A Place of Greater Safety, but for some reason she dropped of my radar about ten years ago. This was during my nomadic phase, when I lost sight of a lot of things.