Nick Ripatrazone on why writers need to run:
While on sabbatical in London in 1972, a homesick Oates began running “compulsively; not as a respite for the intensity of writing but as a function of writing.” At the same time, she began keeping a journal that ultimately exceeded 4,000 single-spaced, typewritten pages. “Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I’m writing as a film or a dream,” she wrote. Oates still runs along “a country road that goes up a hill” where she feels “there will be ideas waiting for me … If I just sat in a room it wouldn’t be the same thing.” Don DeLillo also relished the transporting effects of running after his morning writing sessions: “This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle—it’s a nice kind of interlude.”
