Ah, But What Do They Drink?

Maud Newton pesters Jonathan Ames with emails until he delivers the goods on the writing life:

Well, if a writer drinks at a colony, they usually drink at night, so let's say they start at 7 p.m. and go to midnight. That's five hours. Then in the morning, they recover from 8 a.m. till 11 a.m. Then they write (with breaks but breaks are part of the writing process) until 3 p.m. before giving up. Then maybe they get a second-wind and throw in a half hour sometime between 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (when dinner is served). So that's 8 hours of drinking and recovery and 4.5 hours of writing. Well, that seems like a very good ratio, because if any writer puts in 4.5 hours, drinking or not drinking, then they're being very productive. After all, we're not teletype machines. So I don't know how that works out percentage wise -- I'm not good at math -- but I'll give it a shot. 33% of the time is spent drinking and recovering and about 17% is spent writing, another 33% is spent sleeping, and the remaining 17% is probably spent reading, going into town, talking on the phone, going for walks, doing weird obsessive personal hygiene things, looking out the window, and so on.