“I need an hour alone before dinner,
with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in
the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It
removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and
putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of
what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I’m
really working I don’t like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because
then I lose the hour. If I don’t have the hour, and start the next day
with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I’m in low spirits. Another
thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the
same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish
things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next
to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up
and start typing.”
- Joan Didion via here and here
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