Paris Review
in 1993. “I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.” Indeed, for much of her writing career, Morrison not only worked a day job—as an editor at Random House—but taught university literature courses and raised her two sons as a single parent. “It does seem hectic,” she admitted in 1977.
But the important thing is that I don’t do anything else. I avoid the social life normally associated with publishing. I don’t go to the cocktail parties, I don’t give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can’t afford it. I brood, thinking of ideas, in the automobilewhen I’m driving to work or in the subway or when I’m mowing the lawn. By the time I get to the paper something’s there—I can produce.
Morrison’s writing hours have varied over the years. In interviews in the 1970s and ’80s, she frequently mentions working on her fiction in the evenings. But by the ’90s, she had switched to the early morning hours, saying, “I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.” For the morning writing, her ritual is to rise around 5:00, make coffee, and “watch the light come.” This last part is crucial. “Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process,” Morrison said. “For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being
in
the light, it’s being there
before it arrives
. It enables me, in some sense.”
Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
The famously prolific American writer—Oates has published more than fifty novels, thirty-six collections of short stories, and dozens of volumes of poetry, drama, and essays—generally writes from 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning until 1:00 P.M. Then she eats lunch and allows herself an afternoon break before resuming work from 4:00 P.M. until dinner at around 7:00. Sometimes she will continue writing after dinner, but more often she reads inthe evening. Given the number of hours she spends at the desk, Oates has pointed out, her productivity is not really so remarkable. “I write and write and write, and rewrite, and even if I retain only a single page from a full day’s work, it
is
a single page, and these pages add up,” she told one interviewer. “As a result I have acquired the reputation over the years of being prolix when in fact I am measured against people who simply don’t work as hard or as long.” This doesn’t mean that she always finds the work pleasant or easy; the first several weeks of a new novel, Oates has said, are particularly difficult and demoralizing: “Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.”
Chuck Close (b. 1940)
“In an ideal world, I would work six hours a day, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon,” Close said recently.
That’s what I always liked to do. Especially since my kids were born. I used to work at night, but when my kids were born I couldn’t just work at night and sleep during the day. So that’s when I started having a kind of regular, nine-to-five work schedule. And if I work more than three hours at a time, I really start screwing up. So the idea is to work for three hours, break for lunch, go back and work for three hours, and then, you know, break. Sometimes I could goback and work in the evening, but basically it was counterproductive. At a certain point, I’d start making enough mistakes that I would spend the next day trying to correct them.
Unfortunately, Close says, his life now has so many obligations that he
in 1993. “I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.” Indeed, for much of her writing career, Morrison not only worked a day job—as an editor at Random House—but taught university literature courses and raised her two sons as a single parent. “It does seem hectic,” she admitted in 1977.
But the important thing is that I don’t do anything else. I avoid the social life normally associated with publishing. I don’t go to the cocktail parties, I don’t give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can’t afford it. I brood, thinking of ideas, in the automobilewhen I’m driving to work or in the subway or when I’m mowing the lawn. By the time I get to the paper something’s there—I can produce.
Morrison’s writing hours have varied over the years. In interviews in the 1970s and ’80s, she frequently mentions working on her fiction in the evenings. But by the ’90s, she had switched to the early morning hours, saying, “I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.” For the morning writing, her ritual is to rise around 5:00, make coffee, and “watch the light come.” This last part is crucial. “Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process,” Morrison said. “For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being
in
the light, it’s being there
before it arrives
. It enables me, in some sense.”
Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
The famously prolific American writer—Oates has published more than fifty novels, thirty-six collections of short stories, and dozens of volumes of poetry, drama, and essays—generally writes from 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning until 1:00 P.M. Then she eats lunch and allows herself an afternoon break before resuming work from 4:00 P.M. until dinner at around 7:00. Sometimes she will continue writing after dinner, but more often she reads inthe evening. Given the number of hours she spends at the desk, Oates has pointed out, her productivity is not really so remarkable. “I write and write and write, and rewrite, and even if I retain only a single page from a full day’s work, it
is
a single page, and these pages add up,” she told one interviewer. “As a result I have acquired the reputation over the years of being prolix when in fact I am measured against people who simply don’t work as hard or as long.” This doesn’t mean that she always finds the work pleasant or easy; the first several weeks of a new novel, Oates has said, are particularly difficult and demoralizing: “Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.”
Chuck Close (b. 1940)
“In an ideal world, I would work six hours a day, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon,” Close said recently.
That’s what I always liked to do. Especially since my kids were born. I used to work at night, but when my kids were born I couldn’t just work at night and sleep during the day. So that’s when I started having a kind of regular, nine-to-five work schedule. And if I work more than three hours at a time, I really start screwing up. So the idea is to work for three hours, break for lunch, go back and work for three hours, and then, you know, break. Sometimes I could goback and work in the evening, but basically it was counterproductive. At a certain point, I’d start making enough mistakes that I would spend the next day trying to correct them.
Unfortunately, Close says, his life now has so many obligations that he
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