When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.In an interview with Anne Tyler in the NYT the other day, she inadvertently left a comment on my blog! In answer to how long can you go without writing, she said: What happens is six months go by after I finish a book and I start to go out of my mind. I have no hobbies, I don’t garden, I hate travel. The impetus is not inspiration, jut a feeling that I better do this.
I love this comment because I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe in compulsion, obsession, loneliness, intensity, fear, desire, ambition, revenge and confusion.
What about you?
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Betsy Lerner 
I believe in all of that. Yet I have more hobbies than I can keep up with and I LOVE to travel! I’m probably a very sick anomaly of a writer.
Also, Anne Tyler’s got nothing on you.
I never looked at it from that perspective. I love it! 💗😊
I stay in as much as possible. I don’t like to garden because the garden is outside in the dirt.
The only gardening skill a writer needs is the seed (of an idea). Oh, and you have to water the damn plant, feed it, weed, prune, and protect until it’s grown, picked and enjoyed.
What a crock of stink-pile that is.
In early early dating days, Spouse asked me if I had any hobbies other than reading and writing. I looked at him like he had three heads.
I read that interview too.
I think I’m in SSS’s boat. A blend of it all – even inspiration.
(I wish we could think of another word for what we like to do other than hobby. Hobby is on my dislike list of words along with veggies, meds and panties. Blech)
Yeah, hobby is a terrible word.
It’s born from desire, nourished with sweet ambition and standing firm against the pain of loneliness. Of these I am confused. And I love to garden, travel and play. She’s focused, talented and successful and I get sidetracked easily, which is why she’s Anne Tyler and I’m MikeD.
Estoy de acuerdo.
let’s not forget theft and appropriation too, for what is a muse but someone to steal from?
I am old fashioned as I do believe in inspiration. It was the magic that got me started with a pen as a little girl.
And traveling on a budget’s fun for me, too, esp. to visit literary haunts of old. Paris, P-town, Bolinas, Greenwich Village, le bateau lavoir in Montmartre, art squats galore. Those trips always kick my writing ass and get me going again. Must be the ghosts swirling around.
All Those Things Focused To A Laser Beam Are INSPIRATION, Providing You Can Breath Deep The Gathering Gloom. The Worst Is The Waiting After You’re Finished & Your Writing Is Out Of Your Hands, & You Don’t Know If It Is Sitting On A Desk Or Being Derisively Dismissed, & You Still Don’t Get Word For Months. Just Fugeddabout It, & Do Something New To You. Sean St. X
Oh yeah! I haven’t been inspired since 1993. And that was a big mistake.
Ha ha. I love that. B
I do stuff, writing included, but writing lives in a place like no other. People inspire me sometimes, for better or worse; mostly, though, it’s water, wind, waves, boats and weather fair or foul. How do I tell you about those joys and terrors, and maybe leave you with a chuckle?
The stuff out there drives what’s in here, and the other way ’round.
With as many facets there are of being human, I think that’s what drives us. I have to snag this feeling of love and capture it before it fully gets away. The longer I wait, the further she goes from me. I have to snag this feeling of fear and capture it before it fully gets away. The longer I wait, the smaller it grows in my mind’s eye so that I can’t get it down in all its gory. I have to snag this feeling of doubt and put it in its place. The longer I wait, the dimmer all other facets of my being human fades in the weakening light. It’s then that I simply become another person. I am not just another person.