Writing Life: I Wake to a Screaming Toddler

Lauren Groff, who visits the Writers Institute on Tuesday, March 27, describes her normal day in a 2010 New York Times interview:

"I wake to a screaming toddler, go for a run to keep the screaming toddlers who live in my head at bay, eat a hasty breakfast of eggs and coffee, and go out to my wee little space that my husband carved out of the back of our garage. We call it a studio, but that’s being kind. I have very indifferent temperature control back there. It’s a swamp in the Florida summer, and in the chilly winter I lose the use of my hands after two hours. So I take many, many trips inside for coffee or popsicles, depending on the season. Once in a while, I’ll look up to find skittering across my desk a palmetto bug — which, as everyone knows, is just high-euphemism for cockroach. And skinks! There are tons of skinks in my studio. I love their little pulsing necks." More.