Writers, no email until lunch

[Matt Rees]

Raymond Chandler wrote that a writer shouldn’t read letters until lunchtime. The energy that ought to go into his novel would be diverted to correspondence.

If email had been invented 50 years earlier, we might never have had “The Big Sleep.”

Email has an itching urgency that letters don’t have. And a letter leads only to the end of the page – the internet clicks you on into endless pages and seemingly into other worlds. So I’m with Chandler. If you’re a writer, don’t even open your email until you’ve finished writing for the day. Given that most writers have enough creative energy for a three or four hour day tops, you’ll only have to wait until lunchtime, after all.<!--more-->

I’ve interviewed dozens of writers for my blog and I always ask about their writing routine. Many of them say that they dabble on the web until they “feel guilty about wasting time,” then they start writing. Trouble is, by then I think they’ve blown their concentration for the day.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.