A Quote by Jonathan Lethem

I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on the clock before I'm allowed to go and do something else. I just try to keep a hand in and work every single day, even if there are other demands or I'm on a book tour or have the flu or something, because then I keep my unconscious engaged with the book. Then I'm always a little bit writing, no matter what else I'm doing.
I find I'm waking up really early now, just to read. Waking up at ungodly hours. But I try to keep up, religiously. When I was a kid, it used to be a book a day. Then a book a week. Now it's like a book every two weeks. But I read every day.
My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can only write fiction effectively for about three or at the most four hours. No big mysteries, I just sit down and try to advance the cause a little bit every day.
I have to get three pages done every day, and there's usually a point about 150 pages in where everything falls apart, where all the plans are for naught. The book has become something else, and I have a nervous breakdown, and then I submit to what the book has become, and I keep going, and that's a terrible and then a great time.
Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion!
It's a job. Get up and do it every day. Show up. Don't say no. Taylor Swift was the third write of my day every week. If I had gone home or said “Ah, man. I'm tired today. I'm not going to write at 4 o'clock in the afternoon with a teenager.' If I had done that, just think. Keep an open mind. Everybody has something to come into the room with and when you're starting out, try everything. You might find your magical writing partner.
My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.
I try to write every day, preferably first thing in the morning. Of course, there are days when something happens to interfere with this ideal schedule. Then I try to find time later in the day. I usually work at home, but sometimes, for a change I'll go to a library or a cafe. And I like to read poetry before I sit down to write.
A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.
I sometimes have to think about that because if I think about these five things and think of them all, I'll drop the balls, so I really have to prioritize and use every free second I have and maximize it. I wake up early, try to get sleep, but try to write for at least three hours every day. A really nice day for me is writing ten hours. I love that. Hasn't been a lot of that recently, but every free second I have I'm doing that.
I've always looked at people like Carine Roitfeld, Donatella Versace, DVF...people who when you walk on a set you feel like they still have so much excitement for what they're doing every day and they just have so much youth even though they've been doing it for so long. Every day just working to keep a young spirit - because even when you're young that's hard to do, because you get so caught up in things. I just think it's so important to make an effort every day to have a young spirit. Then when you get older, you always kind of keep that.
The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.
I exercise a lot. I enjoy exercising. I switch back and forth with cardio and strength training every other day, and I try to do something active every single day. Other than that, I try to make sure I have enough quiet time to myself to recharge every week as well.
The challenge CEOs will face three to five years from now is the same one that they face today. That is engagement. It's hard to keep people engaged in what they are doing. As this generation grows up around social media like Twitter where things are 140 characters, how do you keep them engaged all hours every day at work? How do you keep them focused on the big goals you have?
I try to be active five to six times a week, and I keep very healthy, but I don't beat myself up on a bad day. If you're working fourteen hours on a set and you need to eat five protein bars, then you just do that. I keep it a regular and normal part of my life as [much as] I can.
You should do it against the clock. Say you are going to do 30 laps in 15 minutes. Then you try to do it each day a little faster. That is putting demands on the body, and that is how you build up. You keep up your energy instead of going downhill.
The thing about photography is that every day is a new day, even if you are working on the same story, because every day you have got a chance to correct what you did the day before, and try to take it a bit further or a bit back.
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