[Haskell-cafe] Tying a simple circularly STM linked list

Hi, I've written a circularly linked list, but there is some code in it I feel is redundant, but don't know how to get rid of: -- Transactional loop. A loop is a circular link list. data Loop a = ItemLink { item :: a , prev :: TVar (Loop a) , next :: TVar (Loop a) } | InitLink -- Create a new empty transactional loop. newLoop :: a -> STM (TVar (Loop a)) newLoop item = do tLoop <- newTVar InitLink writeTVar tLoop (ItemLink item tLoop tLoop) return tLoop In the above, the InitLink value is only ever used in the newLoop function to create a single one element circular linked list. Is there a way to write newLoop to avoid using this value? Thanks -John