Toby Wolff on Writing

Tonight I'm going to hear Tobias Wolff (author of This Boy's Life) as part of the New Yorker Festival. To prepare (and because I'm a chronic procrastinator) I did a little web search and uncovered an interview with him on posted salon.com

He had some really interesting things to say about writing and the writing life.

And this little nugget really hit home:

Writing is arduous, isn't it? When other people go to what they call work, they sit at their desks a little while, go over their stats, check the email, answer it, read some reports, and then they get up and go to the office next door, talk business, schmooze a little, go back, sit down and read a bit, type up some memos, go down the hall for a meeting, go out for lunch, then come back and do what they did in the morning. Work for most people is really very social, and the actual thinking is often done in community. There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

You can read the whole interview here.