Alice Walker is featured on the cover of the October issue of Writer’s Digest. In the interview she is as gracious, thoughtful and wise and you’d expect. I especially liked her answer to a question about her writing schedule.
“For, I would say, three decades, I wrote every morning, or I made the space. Because part of writing is not so much that you’re going to actually write something every day, but what you should have, or need to have, is the possibility, which means the space and the time set aside—as if you were going to have someone come to tea. If you are expecting someone to come to tea but you’re not going to be there, they may not come, and if I were them, I wouldn’t come. So, it’s about receptivity and being home when your guest is expected, or even when you hope that they will come.”
Isn’t that a lovely thought… expecting someone for tea? It’s certainly a more delicate way of espousing the old writer’s adage: Butt in chair, hands on Keyboard (BICHOK).
Meanwhile author John Scalzi blogged on a similar topic in his no-nonsense post about finding the time to write. In reference to Scalzi’s post, romance author Alison Kent examines her own writing habits.