All quotes are from: On the Move: A Life. By Oliver Sacks
In the final pages, of the final chapter of On the Move, Sacks returns to one of his favorite topics – writing.
Journaling was essential for Sacks. He always kept a notebook close:
I started keeping journals when I was fourteen and at last count had nearly a thousand. They come in all shapes and sizes, from little pocket ones which I carry around with me to enormous tomes. I always keep a notebook by my bedside, for dreams as well as nighttime thoughts, and I try to have one by the swimming pool or the lakeside or the seashore; swimming too is very productive of thoughts which I must write, especially if they present themselves, as they sometimes do, in the form of whole sentences or paragraphs.
On using journals as method for talking to one’s self:
My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself.
Sacks strays away from the tortured writer narrative. His attitude towards writing is similar to Ray Bradbury.
It’s a pleasure. It’s a joy. It’s an elixir to the chaos of life.
The act of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place – irrespective of my subject-where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupations, or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and that I have been writing all day.
And after seventy years writing is still fun!
Over a lifetime, I have written millions of words, but the act of writing seems as fresh, and as much fun, as when I started it nearly seventy years ago.
Floodlights and Goalposts 