[Ads-l] Quote About Asimov

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Jan 2 18:18:10 UTC 2017


There is a great quote about Isaac Asimov, which Wikiquote presents as follows:

  *   He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.
     *   Attributed to Harlan Ellison<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison>, quoted in Page Fright : Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (2009) by Harry Bruce
     *   Variant: Most writers hate to write, and will grasp any excuse to do something else ... There are exceptions. Isaac Asimov actually was never happier than sitting at a keyboard - first, his old typewriter; then, the TRS-80<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80>; and later, a more conventional PC. But then, Isaac was unusual, and his experience with writer's block was the worst 10 minutes of his life.
        *   Jerry Pournelle<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle>, in "Chaos Manor: Is there an Upgrade in your future?" in Dr. Dobb's Journal : Software Tools For The Professional Programmer (2005), Vol. 30, Issues 374-379, p. 9

Can anyone point me to earlier evidence for this witticism?


Fred Shapiro


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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