A Quote by Aminatta Forna
I'm at my desk for about 9:30 A.M., and I stay there all day. Then there's a lot of checking Facebook and eBay and that sort of thing.
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When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I look at is the checking account report from the day before. I love checking accounts. I dream about them.
I've read about 80 books a year for the past 50 years. I come from cultural breeding. I don't have a cellphone. When you spend all your time checking your cellphone messages, or updating your Facebook (of course I don't have a Facebook page) then you don't have any time for reading.
I haven't sworn off Facebook. I'm on Facebook. There's a fan page on Facebook that I will update, but I'm on there myself under a pseudonym, because there were a lot of people able to private-message me on Facebook, and it was getting really weird. And then with MySpace, I just don't read messages. I delete everything, and I just post updates every now and then.
A typical workday for me is getting up at about 5:00, 5:15 in the morning, getting some coffee or tea as quickly as possible, and then getting to my desk. And ideally, I'll start writing around 5:30, 5:45, and I'll write for three, four hours, and then I'll take a break, and read over what I write. Maybe about lunchtime, I'll go exercise or get out into the day. Then I'll either read over what I wrote the day before and quit work around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon and spend some time with my kids.
I've never planned ahead.I just sort of go through life checking the menu of three meals that day. I never worry about tomorrow. It's only since I've gotten older that I've begun to wonder about time running out. Is it sufficient unto itself that I don't plan? Because maybe next Thursday won't come one day. And then, I'm concerned about that. But that's not uniquely the writer's concern, that's the concern of every middle-aged man who looks in the mirror.
I read a ton of nonfiction. I tend to read about a lot of very extreme situations, life-or-death situations. I'm very interested in books about Arctic exploration or about doomed Apollo missions. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction that's sort of hyperbolic and visceral. And then I kind of draw on my own personal experiences and my own sort of generic life experience, and I kind of try to feed my day-to-day reality that I have with sort of high stakes reference points that I read about. They're things everyone can relate to.
Today is Earth Day. Environmentalists spent the day drawing attention to the Earth, while the Earth just spent the day checking Facebook to see which planets wished it a happy Earth Day.
I've had friends whose boyfriends I meet, then they break up and I end up staying buddies with the boyfriend. In this day and age with social media and Facebook, Twitter, it's really impossible to escape people that you've been involved with. In a weird way, it makes it easier for everyone to stay friends because you're just sort of stuck there.
Go to the desk. Stay at the desk. Thrive at the desk.
The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon.
It's very nice when you're checking onto a flight and the person behind the desk suddenly upgrades your seat for you and then hands you back the boarding pass and says, 'It's my favorite movie.'
Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can't tell you every document that I've seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don't remember.
During the week I have workout every day from 9 to noon, then I get to rest, then back to the gym from 4:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M.
If you're a content brand, you have to be in every place your audience is. Sometimes your audience is on the couch and wants to watch a 30-minute show, and sometimes they're checking their Facebook feed and want to see something that's only a minute long.
I just kept going to the gym, and luckily I have a gym at home, so I just go in there probably for 30 minutes and then I go back out and then I go back in for another 30 minutes and accumulated like about three-and-a-half hours of working out a day. It was a lot. It was ridiculous. But I said I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it right.
I haven't sworn off Facebook. I'm on Facebook. There's a fan page on Facebook that I will update, but I'm on there myself under a pseudonym, because there were a lot of people able to private-message me on Facebook, and it was getting really weird.
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