I am a hard worker.

Hard work gets confused with visible strain — the late night, the sacrificed weekend, the story you can tell afterwards about how gruelling it was.

Most of the real thing looks like nothing at all. A Tuesday. Two and a half hours at a desk, no drama, no interruptions, much the same as last Tuesday.

Nobody photographs that, and it does not make an anecdote.

But total up what you actually produced last year and the great majority traces back to those unremarkable middles, rather than to the heroic weeks, which mostly repaired damage caused by the weeks before them.