Sit-In

Why You Should Sit When You Read and Write

Hemingway and Woolf liked to stand, but authors like Geoff Dyer and Zoe Heller still write on their “arse.”

The medical establishment has been bombarding the press about the dangers of sitting. “Sitting is the new smoking,” a doctor recently told the Los Angeles Times. And many authors have extolled the virtues of writing while standing, or even walking. But The New Republic’s Ben Crair comes to the defense of sitters. “Sitting, for me, is one of the true rewards of writing,” he writes. “If I’ve sat on my arse all day,” author Geoff Dyer says, “then what I most want to do come evening is sit on it some more.” “The concentration required to overcome my sitting down reflex would leave no room for thinking about the work,” the novelist Zoe Heller tells Crair. “Besides which, sitting is the least of my writing sins. The cigarette and Diet Coke habit is a much more pressing concern.”