On Writing

[eveningscribe.livejournal.com]

"Uh... Gwen my love, I am not going to apologize for writing... anymore than I would apologize for this missing foot... and in truth the one led to the other. When I could no longer follow the profession of arms, I had to do something to eat. I wasn't trained for anything else and back home some other kid had my paper route. But writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training. But writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb the writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror. And - attend me carefully Gwen! - there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites."
~Dr. Richard Ames, Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Bwahahahha... Brilliant!