One of my very favorite writers in the world is an essayist named John McPhee, who has been writing for the New Yorker for over 40 years now. I just re-read one of his collections, Uncommon Carriers, and so I was delighted to read a lengthy interview with him in the Paris Review. (No, I do not subscribe to such a highfalutin publication. I happened to see the interview mentioned elsewhere.)

I knew this already, but I was reminded again that the eminent Mr. McPhee is just around the corner from me – he lives and works in Princeton, and he still teaches a seminar in nonfiction writing at the university. Oh, how I would like to take that class! He’s 79 years old, and I’m going to have to win the lottery pretty soon in order to make that happen. I should be paying closer attention to see if he does any lectures in town there.

My very favorite part of the interview was this (emphasis mine):

“It may sound like I’ve got some sort of formula by which I write. Hell, no! You’re out there completely on your own — all you’ve got to do is write. OK, it’s nine in the morning. All I’ve got to do is write. But I go hours before I’m able to write a word. I make tea. I mean, I used to make tea all day long. And exercise, I do that every other day. I sharpened pencils in the old days when pencils were sharpened. I just ran pencils down. Ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, three, four — this is every day. This is damn near every day. It’s four-thirty and I’m beginning to panic. It’s like a coiling spring. I’m really unhappy. I mean, you’re going to lose the day if you keep this up long enough. Five: I start to write. Seven: I go home. That happens over and over and over again. So why don’t I work at a bank and then come in at five and start writing? Because I need those seven hours of gonging around. I’m just not that disciplined. I don’t write in the morning — I just try to write.”

The procrastinator in me is always deeply happy to read things like this.

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