For me, the “S” in Sunday stands for sloth; so after a breakfast of bananas and oatmeal, I remained in my fleecy robe and crossed into the living room to read. On the opposite wall, the computer screen glared accusingly.
“Shouldn’t you be writing?” it seemed to say.
“It’s Sunday,’ I replied, clinging to the latest edition of “Vanity Fair.”
The computer wasn’t satisfied.
“Yes, but you took Friday off, remember? You spent it with a college friend visiting from Paris.”
“Yes-s-s,” I hissed. “But that wasn’t all day. It was only a few hours.”
“Still you didn’t write on Friday, did you?”
Like a sulky child, I ignored the computer and in my magazine turned to an interview with John Logan. He was the screen writer for “Hugo,” a filmthat had been nominated for an Academy Award in 2012. Asked about his solitary life and his decision to avoid Hollywood’s night scene, he dismissed the inference that he was lonely. A solitary life meant being engaged with one’s thoughts, he explained. I agreed and felt a twinge when he went on to say:
“Writers get burned out easily if they don’t have the resolve … If you don’t have steel in you, you’ll never make it in screenwriting.” (“Logan’s Run” by John Heilpern, Vanity Fair, 3/12, pg. 152)
Logan was right, of course. And so was my computer.
I rose from my chair and fired up the screen.
