ABSTRACT
I think it was the rain that woke me. I could suddenly hear it on the skylight and the roof just above my head, blowing in off the English Channel onto the Sussex coast on this morning in March as the dawn began to break. Then again, I had been waking early with something on my mind for a while now: half-formed sentences about autobiography; ideas about memory and references to narrative; shelves and libraries full of books unread by me that made my heart speed up as I struggled to get a grip on writing the chapter before the deadline. Dry in the mouth and out of my depth again.
