In a message dated 8/4/12 8:03:59 PM, [email protected] writes:
> Wasn't it Dickens who wrote surrounded by a house-full of unruly, > screaming > brat-kids? > Yes. In his noisy living room on Doughty street, he would sit, evidently absorbed in his writing, and then utter aloud a pertinent comment on a remark made in a far corner of the room. Twain also wrote surrounded by children. When I was a book publisher, one of "my" authors was the Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriot. Before he began writing he was a good raconteur. After recounting an engaging description of some episode in his work, he'd frequently say, "I should write that down." At last, when he was about fifty, his wife told him, "You always say that, but you never do it." Properly chastised, he made himself sit alone at his typewriter while his wife and two children were out in the living room watching tv. James felt lonesome, deprived of the fun -- and he wasn't writing. At last he dragged his typewriter table into the living room. Only there, surrounded by his family and the tv, could he begin to write. In fact, he found his nom de plume on the tv (his real name was Alf Wight): He was watching what we call "soccer" and the goalie's name was Jim Herriot.
