A Quote by Antony Beevor
When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.
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I hate being called lazy, so when everybody gets up at half seven in the morning, I'm up at the same time. Everyone goes to work and I'll do a few hours of writing, then I'll mess about for a bit and come back to it. By the time I go home I'm done. I think it's really good to keep that kind of a routine with writing. I find that when I don't do that, it's really hard to get back into that headspace of writing.
My work is very dear to me, and certainly I have had all the emotional highs and lows that go with trying to get it to an audience. But I do have some kind of detachment that seems somewhat unusual in my trade. I'm a writer who writes every day. I don't have a period of months where I can't get anything done and I wander around tearing my hair out. When I come back from a book tour, for instance, I might have one day where I sleep late and then check my e-mail, and then go for a walk, and then the next day I'm really itching to get back at writing a story.
I went to work at seven in the morning. Around noon time we got the watery soup. And we worked until seven or eight or nine at night, sometimes later. And then I walked back home - there was no public transportation - into that shared room. And if there was food we would prepare an evening meal depending on what was available. And then probably go to bed because it was cold most the time. And then start the day all over again, six or seven days a week.
Now your kids can't escape. Thirteen-year-olds back then, if they didn't watch the evening news, they didn't see news. If they didn't watch the 6:30 or seven p.m. news, they didn't see news. Today younger people have much more access to that kind of hard news than you did when you were 13 back then.
Basically, I go to the local farmer's market and decide to what to cook then, depending on what I find. Either my wife or I cook, and we usually finish a bottle or two of wine by the time we are done cooking and eating.
I would imagine that most of my writing is done spontaneously. I had no intention of writing, and then I'll just walk through the house, and I'll hear this melody, and I'll turn on the tape players and go back to it later on. Some days I'll get 3-5 songs a day.
I've always loved my red wine, and when I'm not working I can open a bottle too many. I love to cook, so it's one for me and one for the casserole. I would consume a bottle of wine on my own of an evening and then literally pass out.
Every day at about four o'clock, I would go up to a farmhouse - or whatever kind of house was around - and knock on the door and say, "Hi, I'm biking across Canada, and I'm wondering if I could pitch my tent on your land." And sometimes people slammed the door in my face, but the vast majority of the time they said, "Of course," and then they said, "Come for dinner," and then they packed me food the next day and fed me breakfast and sometimes they got out the bottle of wine they'd been saving for a special occasion.
Ive always loved my red wine, and when Im not working I can open a bottle too many. I love to cook, so its one for me and one for the casserole. I would consume a bottle of wine on my own of an evening and then literally pass out.
I was a huge David Letterman fan, even going back to when he was on NBC. My parents would only let me watch a half hour of television a day, so I would record Letterman the night before and then watch it when I came home from school. That's what made me want to do a T.V. show.
The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can't do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That's how you make it all of one piece.
I would not like to live in the past because you don't get anesthetic when you go to the dentist. You don't get antibiotics. You don't get the things that you are used to now, cell phones and televisions and things that are very convenient. You don't want that. But, it would be fun if you could, every now and then, just meet a friend for lunch at Maxim's in Paris in 1900, or go back to 1870 just for a couple of hours, take a walk in the park, and then come right back to Broadway.
We have to get families back in the game, get back where Saturday night, everything stops. A case of beer comes out and a bottle of rye and anyone who comes to the house, they better want to watch hockey.
I used to go to work with Dad on the weekend. We'd drive past an indoor go-kart track every now and then, and we went there a few times. I was never tall enough, so I always left upset. I think I was seven when I was the right height, and I was like, 'Please let me have a go.' It was love at first sight.
During the day, I don't read too much of the blog traffic, but then at night, I read transcripts of all of the network packages, and then I watch the wires and some of the political blogs.
When you finish work, practically everybody in that place is going to watch a movie at night anyway. They're tired. They have dinner. They go up to their room. They're watching TV.
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