Like all prolonged creative acts, writing a book is intense, obsessive, isolating, absurdly focused, and consuming.

For certain reasons, writing Ad Infinitumwas more intense, obsessive, etc., than most. The only way I could stop it taking over completely was to dislodge it by creating another piece of writing. So in the mornings, I'd slave over my version of deathless prose about endless counting and in the afternoons I'd escape by following a fixed routine: switch to another word processor with its text pre-set to pale yellow and screen to sky-blue, gaze into that featureless blue beyond, and type.

The rules were simple. No sloping off: I had to sit there at the keyboard until I'd filled the screen. No overfilling: all the text had to be visible; this was absolutely vital. No connection to the labour of the morning. No getting of(f) the point. No gesturing outside the text: the piece had to be self-contained; whatever that means.

I have fond memories of that patch of digital sky.

I called the pieces screens.