I was fourteen floors up in a brownstone building on 8th, taking notes from a personal tutor. At the whiteboard, she twiddled a pen from end-to-end between slender fingers, her long plait falling over her shoulder, warm as a python.

"Good fiction always has a narrative arc", she said, and drew a wonky little hill to demonstrate. "The main character starts out wanting something –that’s the essential drive in narrative – and meets crises and complications along the way through which s/he grows… like so". She marked a few tiny crosses on the incline, then started to talk through the fast, downhill descent.

I was still In The Beginning: "Just give me my Noah", I mused; "Let us spend long days smoothing the splinters of each other’s rough timbers or removing small motes from each other’s blinded eyes. And many wet-tossed nights, coupling and cataloguing, throwing insatiable hungers overboard to satisfy the ravenous sharks we’ve so carelessly left behind. Above all, let us arrive at our apex well-oiled on the heady scent of olives, Paradise Refound…"

The tutor cleared her throat in an obvious attempt to regain my concentration. "Have you been listening?" she doubtfully enquired. "To every word", I hastily replied; "Just, well, kind of… brainstorming…"