The Mechanic & the Muse

It's a bird, it's a plane; no, it's Super-Scientist/WriterMan

The other night, NOVA, the PBS science show, profiled an MIT roboticist who also happens to be an acclaimed fiction writer.

Yes, I too was inclined tohate him Karl Iagnemma , until I saw his commitment to sticking his butt in the chair to write, whether he thinks he has anything to write. It also explored the loneliness of the writing life, and my personal favorite, one of Karl Iagnemma's author friends, who seems to love the expression "Dude."

Quote of the Day - "I have to try"

"My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages. At most I'll spend three or four hours daily, sometimes less. The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning. If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all."
--Anne Tyler

(from a rare interview with Margo Rabb in Issue 20 of failbetter.com, on online literary quarterly.  Thanks to Mike Janssen for the link. Photo of Anne Tyler by Diana Walker, via Randomhouse.com; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's writing desk via altFrankfurt.com.