Writing While Shaggy

I need a haircut. Bad. If it doesn't happen soon, I think my writing will fall off a cliff.

Back in the bad old days when I was working a real job in marketing communications at an investment company, I sometimes took advantage of the opportunity to work from home. It was a pretty neat benefit. I got to skip the hour commute on clanky NJ Transit trains infested with hacking, sneezing commuters engaged in obnoxiously loud cell phone conversations and the depressing prospect of trying to get work done in my freezing office in Newark while tuning out the gossipy noise of my fellow workers.

But it seems that I was less productive at home. And my writing wasn't as sharp. I felt disconnected working in my basement and distracted by all the undone projects around the house staring at me as I was trying to build website content for various product launches. Plus, I'm not good on the telephone and conference calls make my skin crawl.

But I think a major part of it is I don't write well in sweatpants. I think it affects my thinking. When I dress sloppy, my writing gets sloppy. Writing requires extreme focus and discipline. So for me, at least, the whole process of putting on a suit, getting on the train, walking to the office, and sitting at my computer put me in the proper mindset: it's time to work. Yeah, even among the hubbub of the office and the horror of my bosses and co-workers, I was able to escape into my head and turn out decent prose. I also wrote four books under those conditions.

I worried when I retired whether I would still be able to write, given that my new office is a table in the corner of the basement. Would I need to resort to wearing a suit while sitting next to my furnace and a few steps away from the cat's litter box? To my immense relief, I found a way to not only write at home, but to write even better.

I started a new routine. Every morning at 9:45, I put down the NY Times, go down to the basement, bring up MS Word and write for at least an hour. I make sure I'm wearing clean underwear and a reasonably unstained sweatshirt and...pants (usually). But the key is I do it every day like a robot. Just like when I was working. The result so far is COME THE HARPIES, my best book to date.

But the challenges of Covid-19 are mounting. My hair is out of control and a mess. It worries me that the mess will spread to my brain and my prose will lose its iron discipline. What if the sloppiness migrates to my attire and I allow stubble to sprout on my cheeks? It's easy to let things go during a pandemic.

It all starts with the fingernails. They're getting pretty long...