December 8th, 2010 / 10:11 am
Power Quote & Random

quote-o-the-day

Loafing is the most productive part of a writer’s life.

James Norman Hall

True dat, Mr. Hall. Internet, coffee maker, gazing out the window at the snow—it may seem like not-writing, even now, but the mind stirs the pink shirt that becomes the fish that sings the flamelets of river, also known as words. For all the clatter of the laboriousness of writing, you should be thankful that every time your eye tingles cotton triangles, your lingual papillae meet ketchup (one of the only foods to trigger all 5 taste receptors: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, umami), your hand grips the perfect heft of a green bocce ball, you are indeed writing. Or you could read a book, another form of osmosis, but Hall isn’t talking about reading, me thinks, because reading is not loafing, no matter how far you drift away…so when someone on Facebook pokes you about yet another 8500 words, or when Joyce Carol Oates belches and out floats her 83rd lurid tale of obsession, etc., etc., relax, relax, go take a slow walk through a cow pasture, an interstate, a marriage, take a walk down through a brown couch, or a blog. You are loafing right now. I mean to say writing. Continue.

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7 Comments

  1. Anonymous

      this made me cry a good cry

  2. reynard

      the other day i learned that bean curd is not a cheese and i thought this is what life is like

  3. markbaumer

      this made me cry a good cry

  4. reynard seifert

      the other day i learned that bean curd is not a cheese and i thought this is what life is like

  5. Mcmfs

      Funny, I just blogged about loafing a few days ago. Whitman was the master loafer.

  6. Tim Horvath

      Just read something not exactly an echo but convergent from Andrew Ervin on the Story Prize blog today: http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/2010/12/andrew-ervin-much-of-my-writing-process.html.

      I agree a thousandfold with much of this. I wouldn’t exempt reading, though. Reading, at least when I feel I’m doing it right, is mud-frolic and ketchup glop. Occasionally I’ll even give the spine a whack like the side of a ketchup bottle.

  7. deadgod

      gestation without reproduction

      laziness = win/win , unless