I began a new story over the last couple of days, and yesterday felt such relief to have it find a little momentum, travel a little way on its own.

Immediately I am stuck again, wheels spinning. The problem is a composite character, who I thought I would make a little bit this person and a little bit that. But I am writing about a family, and it seems to me that no family can be composite; each member is precisely balanced in response to the others, and it seems that the biographical details of a person are also balanced like cards in a card house, and that no choice is random. So I want someone who played rockabilly in real life to now play blues, but my imagination won't have it. It's not TRUE. This man from the mines played rockabilly, that man from the refinery played the blues. This man from the mines had duck-tail hair and his friends wore suits. That man from the refinery had long hair and his friends wore beards. The man from the mines told his sad story in loops, a confused truth of heroism and pity. The man from the refinery could only tell other stories, because his own was lost. The facts of each story seem so absolutely interdependent and necessary to me. And the truth has a stranglehold, because I can't write the truth.