There are evolutionary changes, too, at my writers’ workshop. One of our members, in his eighties, has sadly but entirely understandably, decided to hang up his pen. Another, just turned seventy, has decided to take a sabbatical. Since both were founder members of the workshop their departures are sad and significant events, though the workshop will doubtless survive.  Just last Sunday marked the second anniversary of the untimely death of one of our members. At the other end of the scale, this evening we went to the fiftieth birthday party of another member of the workshop (spring chickens most of us ain’t). Such existential milestones remind me just how time consuming ‘real’ writing is, if you want to do it ‘properly’. For getting the text down is only the beginning (which reminds me of Capote’s put-down of Kerouac – ‘That isn’t writing, it’s typing’). Because we all have ‘day jobs’ we have to devote our ‘spare time’ to our common passion, and spare time is scarce. Hence it takes us, relatively-speaking, a long time to produce. But produce we do and we will continue to do.