January 26, 2021, by Tosh Berman

My favorite writers tend to encounter with the culture around them. Robert Benchley, who I have mentioned before in other essays, wrote a regular column about the absurdness of everyday life. He made the usual into something exotic, which stays in my mind as I do my writings. Isolation is useful for some writers, but some can do their work in the heat of the upheaval or in times of great distress. I tend to need both the vacancy of an empty and quiet room, as well as the roar of the public world. 

I have the romantic notion of a writer working from his bed in the middle-of-the-night and relying on nothing except memories and tea. Marcel Proust, of course, but also I have seen a series of photos of Yukio Mishima. Their writing hours were from Midnight to dawn. Vampires at work, but not at play, at least not beyond their workspace. 

I don't have the energy to write at night because I'm either drinking, eating, watching a film, or thinking about what nightmares lay ahead of me. I tend to do my work before even my first cup of coffee. I first look at the news, and then I study the calendar's current day to see if there is anything important that happens historically or someone born on this particular date. I meditate on the words and images in front of me until I write my first sentence. Afterward, it is like being a passenger on a train going from point A to B. I don't look back and move forward. Failure and success don't mean that much to me other than the journey itself.