I thought--I'd like very much to think--that the rhythms of my life as a writer would derive from whatever project I was devoting myself to. There'd be times I'd be doing research and notes, other times I'd be immersed in the imaginative world of a play or novel (working at my country retreat, of course, or an artist's colony), still others when I'd be obsessing for weeks about the fine points of revision. It's never really turned out that way. As I will probably be saying again and again, I don't write that much, I don't finish that much, I don't publish that much. Yet I know that a lot of people who get done a lot more than I do are, like me, spending relatively little of their time on writing and a whole lot more on jobs, on committees, on business. I like teaching very much (although I do not exactly like having a job; I think it might be nice to be an itinerant, free-lance kind of a teacher, if anyone could make a living that way), but I seem to spend all of my time on it; I like working with the organizations I work with, but I seem to spend all of my time on them; and I am spending no time at all writing a very interesting story I have rolling around in my head a lot lately--I'll just have to tell you about it another time--and all the writing I am doing seems to be instructions for assignments, reviews of curricular development proposals, reports to boards. (I am, very improbably, on the board of two organizations, both of which are in rapid change, and, like everybody else these days, looking to "get to the next level.")
What an appallingly boring thing to complain about, as an obstacle to writing. It makes alcoholism, suicidal tendencies, obsessive love affairs, religious mania all seem so refreshing, so practically wholesome in comparison.