Five Hours a Day and "Lost"...

Someone on a writing list I am on posted that Nicholas Sparks spends five hours a day writing (it's on his site). Someone asked if I write that many hours a day.

I sure start out with noble intentions like that. And maybe I come close on some days, but I simply can't sit still that long. An hour, tops, and then I'm up, foraging in the kitchen. Or getting another cup of coffee. Or playing (just one quick game, I swear) of FreeCell. Or answering e-mail because really that's the most important task of my day ;-).

I do work an eight to ten-hour day. But I don't write for all 8-10 hours. I write for maybe two (and I'm talking new writing where I am actually composing on the page). The rest of the day, I play with the book, editing sections, brainstorming, eating ice cream...whoops, that has nothing to do with the book. But true, honest-to-Pete-writing-the-words, I can't do that for five hours. I think all my extremities would go blue with disuse.

Then again, maybe that's why Mr. Sparks is on the NYT list and I'm not ;-) Or maybe I just need to kill the hero at the end and really tick off my readers so that they'll tell all their friends not to read the book because it ends badly, and then that will in turn sell a gazillion copies ;-)

What I'm reading now: just finished BAD TWIN, the book that goes along with "Lost." I was hoping for some show revelations in there but all I got was a moderately interesting story with weak writing. Nevertheless, I kept going, hoping that there would be a really cool, bang-up ending. There wasn't. :-( Perhaps it was part of the design--this was supposed to be novelist Gary Troup's first book but he went down on the plane with the other "Lost" people. I did love the whole fiction created around the fiction, which is pretty cool (as is www.hansocareers.com, which is the website for "jobs" with the Hanso Foundation, the people who built the hatches on the island...read the job descriptions. I laughed for days at some of them. SIDE NOTE: these are fake jobs, so don't go applying. It's all part of the fictional world of "Lost").

I'm a total "Lost" fan and have been re-watching the first season to catch all I missed and start putting more of the puzzle pieces together.

Hmm...now that I think about it, all those DVDs for Season 1 -- THOSE are the reason why I'm not writing for 5 hours a day. I'm watching TV :-)

Shirley
Listening to: Nothing :-( I'm not at home, so I don't have my music playing