Dame Muriel Spark, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and many other novels and poetry, had this important bit of advice for writers. It comes from her 1988 novel A Far Cry from Kensington:
“If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some
piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the
cat in the room where you work...the cat will invariably get up on your
desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp. The light from a desk
lamp...gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be
serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.
"And the
tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there
at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your
concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the
self-command it has lost.
"You need not watch the cat all the time. Its
presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is
remarkable, very mysterious.”
2 comments:
Unless, of course, the cat prefers your laptop keyboard warmth...
Indeed, Pippin does like nuzzling up against the keyboard as the laptop is on my lap. He gets the best of both heat-generating worlds. It makes it hard to write, though.
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