flitting around the edge of my mind are the analogies to explain the reason i chose to grind up my writing on a metate and not simply toss the paper away in a garbage can , and some of my reasons are quite ridiculous ; i could explain to you that over my lifetime writing has mutated into an act comparable to grinding ; that the words i choose often liquefy horrifyingly , phrases disintegrate , paragraphs deteriorate , as i attempt to manipulate them on the page ; perhaps the grinding stone supplies the analogy i need when every plot i devise seems to be people with fantastic phantoms and the actions of these phantoms inevitably turn into meaningless mush ; a metate may have meaning to me because my words seem to dissolve in my hands like a fine misty powder even as i attempt ever more frantically to make them more refined ; that i overwork every passage until it has been reduced to a cold vapid slime ; or do i mean , by telling you about the metate , to depict the workman-like way that i simply went back again and again to writing , with my nose to the grindstone , day in and day out , grinding out family meals ?