From For Writers Only, by Sophy Burnham, talking about making time for writing:

I had just picked the book up off the bookshelf and was idly flipping through it, and that quote struck me, but for a reason that didn't have anything to do with what she was talking about.

I finished the audio version of The Breaker tonight in the car on the way home, so I stopped at the library and returned it, and picked up another audio book, a James Lee Burke book, I don't remember now which one. In the library parking lot, I took the cassette out of the CD changer in the trunk and loaded the first half of the new book in, then turned it on as I drove home, and I couldn't do it.

I had enjoyed listening to the previous book, and was glad I had been able to finish it, but it was because I was in the middle of the story. It's always difficult to change books, I find--I get so used to the narrator's voice, listening on the way to work and on the way home, a book usually takes about a week and a half to two weeks to finish, and in that time the narrator becomes so familiar that it's jarring to switch to another one.

I have my favorites--I know that if a book is being read by George Guidall, or Richard Ferrone or Frank Muller, I'll probably like it. The one I just finished was read by Simon Prebble, and he did a wonderful job, and he's one that I'll look for in the future as well.

It's sort of like I never want a book to end; it's like . . . I don't know. I just get so used to getting in the car and turning on the CD player and listening to the next installment of the story, and then one day, it's over.

I listened to a few paragraphs of the new book, and -- I've been kind of jittery today anyway -- I thought, oh, I can't do this. Partly because I didn't want to get used to a new narrator, but also because now I've got my own story in my head, even more so than I usually do. I'm always thinking, always forming sentences and paragraphs and having conversations in my head, but now that the conversations are actually forming themselves into a book, I don't want to silence them by listening to someone else's story. I need to be able to listen to my own story.

I can deal with silence in the car in good weather, with the window or the moon roof open--the rushing air noise makes it difficult to listen to anything anyway--but when the weather gets cold and wet, I need to be able to turn on something distracting. So I decided that instead of listening to a book, I'd listen to music for awhile. I brought the CD changer cassette into the house with me when I got home, along with the two CD cases I keep in the trunk. I paged through them, and decided that it's going to be Christmas in my car this week.

I wanted to choose music that I was familiar with, and that made me happy, and that could just kind of be there without requiring too much thought or attention on my part, so I loaded up the cassette with Christmas music. A Fresh Aire Christmas, A Very Special Christmas, Jimmy Buffett's Christmas Island, Excelsis: A Dark Noel (one of my favorite Christmas albums, and almost certainly the strangest; Misty and Matt called it "scary Christmas music" when I played it for them; I notice there's a second volume out now, which I'd love to have); the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack; and one other that I can't remember.

Not a vision of sugarplums in the bunch.