Idiot Box Not Creativity Killer After All?

Following up on yesterday’s advice to aspiring writers from Barry Eisler to choose working on your novel over another hour of television, Andrea Seigel informs us via email that she’s wrote both her novels, To Feel Stuff and Like the Red Panda, parked in front of the tube. “I think that’s at least half the reason they got finished,” she says. “Accordingly, I advise all my novel students to write in the company of Veronica Mars. TV’s not the problem, and I’m tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV’s getting in your way of writing a book, then you don’t want to write a book bad enough.” For the record, TV’s been pretty good to Seigel in other ways, too; last month, The N began developing Panda into a potential new series.

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