I’ve been longing for some uninterrupted writing time. I am frequently thwarting myself, and I imagine that I could reconfigure my time—“optimize” it—or eke out more time by emulating one of the many writers who have either stayed up late or woken up at 4 am every day to write before their other labors commence. Discipline is one thing but a bootstrap theory of writing puts me off.

Interruption contains rupture, the break. After a month of playing in it, my reading group finally asks out loud wha...