Double life. Maybe four. Aren’t we all? Parts that are difficult to assemble.

Again I watch night dreams, like a half-forgotten movie. I review and rate like I’m Rotten Tomatoes. Nightmares will play at the end of the year in the list of the best thrillers. I might even steal some photos to write about (summer).

In my spare time at school, I take the book I read and go sit in the sun listening to music on my headphones. If a student passes by, he doesn’t talk to me, he knows that it’s my time to be with myself. Otherwise, I am absolutely with them.

Routes for daughters. While I wait, political news and no posts. During the day, after running five kilometers to my room, I make playlists on Spotify to keep myself busy creatively. Like the teacher in Strindberg’s Dream Drama, I correct the same mistakes in my notebooks over and over again until I am a first grader again.

Twice a week basketball. Other nights, movies. The theater is only if I have a hunch that it will be really good (I have seen so many “crabs” that I usually fall into). I sleep with chickens. For 20 years now, my wife has been joking with me, saying that I am old because I rarely leave the house. I have the answers ready that I walked enough at the university and the less time I spend with a drink in my hand, the less likely I am to say stupid things. I always get exactly seven hours of sleep—I once set my alarm on a deserted beach and my friends thought I had a serious problem. I love repetitive habits. In my work, however, there are failures.

For two weeks in July, Rena takes our daughters to the sea or to Space. Alone at home! Cut off sociability (the rest of the time I’m a “party-goer”). I use the Internet only to visit lexigram and slang.gr.

“In the shower, under the hot water of the pipes under the scorching Cypriot sun, I watch the following scenes and prepare the dialogues.”

I write without reading yesterday. I sat down at the big table in the living room. I get up only to switch the record playing on the turntable.

Running break. In the shower, under the hot water pipes under the scorching Cypriot sun, I watch the following scenes and dialogue previews. I toss the frozen spinach cannelloni into the oven and return to the computer.

If I pass out and say to rest on the balcony for a while, there is a risk that my eyes will close and the rest of the day will be lost, because I will not be able to regain my old energy. I hit the keyboard harder and it sounds like polyrhythmic music.

Three more kilometers to go. But the bell is already ringing in my head about the last lap of the endurance race I’m writing about today. I sit down again and accelerate.

When I pass the psychological limit of 7,000 words, I get dizzy from heights and avoid looking down. In such phases, long ago, I extinguished one cigarette and lit the next. In more recent times, I have demolished an entire refrigerator along with adjacent cabinets. Now I slowly drink four glasses of red wine to write a few more pages. When the result satisfies me (rare, but this is a divine feeling), I think that I am ready to immediately conquer the world.

I get over it by just re-reading it again, cooler after a while. Popi, my editor, also helps with constant feedback on improvements, as do Rena and close friends who read the original draft. So while it takes me no more than four months to complete a first draft, it can take two or three years before a book hits the press. This long period, although less heroic, is significant. When my daily life goes on the rails, I cut, correct and rewrite entire chapters. And if on the day I wrote “the end” my greatest desire was to immediately see it in print, then when it finally comes out and I hold it in my hands, it will be something that does not belong to me. at least not more than to their readers.