I used to be a late starter, but now I get up in the dark like a medieval monk, commit unmediated scribble to a notebook, and go back to bed about six, hoping to sleep for another two hours and to wake slowly and in silence. Random noise, voices in other rooms, get me off to a savage, disorderly start, but if I am left in peace to reach for a pen, I feel through my fingertips what sort of day it is.
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HM
Hilary Mantel
Novelist and critic
United Kingdom · 1952–2022
Arts and letters
About
English novelist, best known for the Thomas Cromwell trilogy of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light. She won the Booker Prize twice, in 2009 and 2012, and also wrote criticism and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.
4 answers
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
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