Writer's Heaven

From Isaac Asimov:

A couple of months ago I had a dream, which I remember with the utmost clarity. (I don’t usually remember my dreams.) I dreamed I had died and gone to Heaven.

I looked about and knew where I was—green fields, fleecy clouds, perfumed air, and the distant, ravishing sound of the heavenly choir. And there was the recording angel smiling broadly at me in greeting.

I said in wonder, “Is this Heaven?”

The recording angel said, “It is.”

I said (and on waking and remembering, I was proud of my integrity), “But there must be a mistake. I don’t belong here. I’m an atheist.”

“No mistake,” said the recording angel.

“But as an atheist how can I qualify?”

The recording angel said sternly, “We decide who qualifies. Not you.”

“I see,” I said. I looked about, pondered for a moment, then turned to the recording angel and asked, “Is there a typewriter here that I can use?”

The significance of the dream was clear to me. I felt Heaven to be the act of writing, and I have been in Heaven for over half a century and I have always known this.

 
“Is there a typewriter [computer] here that I can use?”

Every writer I know could ask that question, even of the recording angel in Heaven, but few of our non-writer spouses, friends, parents, siblings, children, or the strangers who always want to know how many hours a day we spend writing would comprehend.

A therapist once told me—she happened to be married to a writer—that studies have found that for people who write every day, the process of writing is actually addictive. Apparently when writing becomes a habit it releases one of those feel-good chemicals in the brain, and so we keep returning to the keyboard to get our fix.

I assume the same must be true for just about anything we humans do regularly with concentration and energy and passion, but I don’t know whether the studies have extended that far.

In any case, I love Isaac Asimov’s dream.

I sometimes wonder how people manage to live who don’t rise each day to find such delicious fun waiting. I’d never thought about what I do as Heaven, but why not?