To amplify on thoughts below, yes, I can see why any writer, a poster child type like Ernest Hemingway, not to belittle him at all, would mention getting "the Black Dog" in conjunction with his creative efforts, particularly after the completion of bringing something out of the ether into being in the form of writing.  And it also makes perfect sense that he would need an everyday project exactly like his boat, The Pilar (written about well recently) just not to go crazy with emptiness.  Something to keep one's hands, mind and body busy.  Hand in hand with the realization that "I am a writer," or that "I have to be now, because I have much at stake here," is the encounter with a great emptiness.  No doubt, part of that emptiness is all the time spent alone with thoughts in the creative sanctuary.  The blank piece of paper doesn't help that.  The rest of the world is doing something, and you've made a bad choice, no matter how instinctive it might have seemed.  And how to get out of it, you ask yourself.  Kerouac, not without a sense of humor, created the self-portrait of the fire lookout post alone in a cabin atop a mountain in the Eastern Cascades, Desolation Angels.


Yoga strikes me as a practice helpful for the writer.  The pose begins with the same facing of emptiness,  followed by the same realization of there be something within, flowing energy inside the stretching form of the body's frame.  The meditation that follows can only be good.  Yoga is one of those very supportive human activities that help us face the emptiness that we all must face, that we do face on a daily basis.  Yoga gives you something to hold on to, and it happens to be good for your health, a major plus.  (Otherwise, it's at least somewhat true that idle hands to the work of the devil.)  For the grand adventurist getting into yoga might not seem so thrilling or worthy of story-lines.  Yoga isn't big game hunting in Africa or fishing for marlin in the Gulf Stream.  But it is something that will keep you, something that will put you into great shape and help you live a long life in good health.  What better thing could there be, actually, for a writer who must go and face that lonely nothingness?  Also helps you deal with the cravings and distracting things.

But, the more you do yoga, the less you feel the urge to write what you might call a sellable book.  Man finds yoga, defeats cravings, doesn't make the pop charts.  The perspective he comes to draw upon is simply too big, too philosophical in nature (of course leading, if not very careful, to pontification.)  Well, as much as anyone, a writer must be careful about his own health.