Cirrus@Austlit

'I have finally finished shredding my novel.

'It had been the work of many days, feeding it into the machine sheet by sheet and watching the pages re-emerge as linguine. It’s not surprising the story was bad. I wrote it soon after my husband died, leaving me with three young children, so the raw ingredients by weight were exhaustion, desperation, false hope and uncertain talent. It was a testament to one thing only: the discipline of writing every day. It was not a Jeanette Winterson creation – ‘a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished’ – but brisk and banal.' (Introduction)