Knitting and knitting and knitting
I envy my wife her hobby–knitting. She can knit while watching TV or having a conversation without missing a beat. And she gets something out of it, too–at the end of a four-hour marathon of NCIS, she’s made half a blanket or whatever.
I don’t have a hobby like that. I’ve tried writing while watching TV, but it just doesn’t work–writing requires so much of my concentration I can’t even listen to music other than classical (and sometimes not even that, depending on how up-tempo it is).
Which all means that, in order to be anything resembling a successful writer, I’ve got to get used to spending a lot of time doing nothing other than writing. It’s hard not to feel like life is passing you by. But that’s always been one of the crosses writers have had to bear, I suppose.
—05/26/09