Losing the Fiance but Winning the Honeymoon

Nell Stevens, “Losing the Fiance but Winning the Honeymoon,” New York Times August 5, 2018, p. ST5.

In the preceding months, I had been in the fateful state of being both bored and in love, completing my Ph.D. in London while the man I was going to marry worked in Boston. In the rare-books reading room at the British Library (where I had gone to write), I spent a lot of time entering online contests filling out form after form in the hope of winning vacations, designer clothes and theater tickets.

COMMENT 

    The library is a refuge for writers, but technology is a source of distraction and a ready excuse for procrastination.  Print books and frustratingly slow (or non-existent) Internet offer a handy solution to distractibility. Some people even advocate solving the problem by reverting to using a typewriter.  The romance, needless to say, was just an excuse to avoid writing.  It didn't work out.