There is a particular quality of light in Amsterdam in October that I have never quite found anywhere else. The canals go grey-green, the bridges disappear into low mist in the early mornings, and the city takes on a quieter, more considered character — as though it, too, is thinking something through.
I came back to Amsterdam after years of living in other places: New York and Ibiza. Each of those places gave me something I needed at the time. But Amsterdam is where I return to write. There is a patience in it. The narrow houses lined up along the canals suggest a kind of orderly interior life, private and unhurried, that suits the particular discipline that serious writing demands.
My desk faces a courtyard. In autumn the plane tree loses its leaves slowly, over several weeks, and I find I mark the progress of my own work by it. Some chapters come quickly, like leaves taken by an early wind. Others hold on — green against all reason — until something shifts, some interior weather changes, and they fall in their own time.
I have learned not to rush either.
It is, I think, the best possible condition in which to write.