I read that Damon Runyon, in New York in the 1930s, would get up at 1 p.m. for a breakfast of ‘fruit, broiled kidneys, toast and six cups of coffee’. Then he would read all the newspapers. Then he would bathe, shave, dress and go out for a long walk which would probably include some shopping — one of his favourite activities. (‘He wanted to buy prize fighters, and racehorses, and great houses, and stacks of clothes and jewellery for his lovely [second] wife.’) In the early evening he would return to his house to change into ‘an entirely different lounge suit’ before proceeding to a restaurant for dinner with friends, invariably an extended and noisy event, and then ducking into the cinema (‘perhaps to two different shows’), after which he would set up shop in another restaurant for ‘another long session’ and ‘hours of talk’. When he eventually went home, at two or three o’clock in the morning, he would read the early editions of the morning papers and after that — only then — would he sit down and write for four hours before bed.
Olivia Glazebrook
Exciting new ways of not writing a novel
Procrastination used to be an honest business – cleaning the bath, putting CDs back in their cases. Now we have Google
issue 14 March 2015
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