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Day 39: Joyce Carol Oates. “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.”

William Styron

“ I have had in my little study in Connecticut all these years that famous line from Flaubert tacked to my wall: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a Bourgeois so that you may be violent and original in your work.” I believe it.”

Day 38: Toni Morrison. For most of her writing career, she had a full-time job and was a single parent to two sons. How, then, she managed to deliver as she did is a mystery. She illuminates saying that her writing hours (rare as they were, in a given day) were concentrated, and she never (could afford to) brooded during those hours. Imagine, then, what we can accomplish, with all the time we waste on an average day.

I have this next to my nightstand table and am reading a little bit (almost) every night as I go,