Re: David Gerrold - War with the Cthorr

In article <390l14hk31v5f7k9a6g06cnfcc69o6st62@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
David T. Bilek <davidbilek@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:

> Carl Dershem <dershem@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> But he's been distracted by having to make a living.
>
> Yeah, right.  Glen Cook wrote a bunch of the Black Company and
> Dread Empire stuff while working on the line at a General Motors
> plant.  Not in his off hours after work but, quite literally, on
> the line.  If Glen Cook can write several books a year while
> busting his ass building cars, David Gerrold could have finished
> one frigging book in 15 years.

It depends on (1) how the author's brain works and (2) the nature of
the work.  Cook was lucky in that (i) he can turn the writing part
of his brain on and off repeatedly without it apparently noticing
the interruptions and (ii) having had lots of assembly-line
assignment within GM which, once he got the hang of the movements,
gave him many small moments of down-time, usually well less than a
minute long, in which to pick up his notebook and pen, allow the
writing center of his brain to pick up right where it had left off,
and scribble down another sentence or two.

(Although he's never mentioned it in talks of his that I've been at,
I have to assume that he also benefited from mostly having sane
bosses/overseers who weren't the type of jerks to bust a productive
worker's ass about non-work-related activities like that.)

Does Gerrold's writing center work the same way in that regard as
Cook's?  I don't know and I bet you don't either.  Does whatever
he's doing to earn money these days allow him those kinds of breaks
for writing?  I don't know and I bet you don't either.

-- 
William December Starr <wdstarr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>