Kurt Vonnegut's Framework

Vonnegut described this day in a letter to his wife on 28 September 1965, while he was teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the family stayed on Cape Cod. He woke at 5:30 and worked until eight, ate breakfast, worked again until ten, then walked into town, ran errands and swam for half an hour in the municipal pool, which he had to himself. Home at 11:45 for the mail and lunch at noon. Afternoons were school, teaching or preparing. Home around 5:30, he numbed what he called his twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water, cooked supper, read and listened to jazz on the radio, and was asleep by ten. He did push-ups and sit-ups through the day and reported feeling lean and sinewy. It is the clearest example in the set of writing before the day job rather than after it: four hours of creative work by ten, exercise before lunch, five hours of paid work, then a genuinely closed evening. The teaching block's edges are the chart's estimate from the word afternoon.