“Most of my friends know—and enjoy mocking me about the fact—that I’m a Mets baseball fan. There is something about baseball I find very conducive to creative thinking—it occupies the eyes but not the mind

, its slow pace leaving plenty of room for daydreaming. Back when I used to have a television, I’d sometimes turn on a baseball game and sit on the couch to write. Now that I live in Queens, I’ve occasionally taken the 7 train out to Citi Field, where I’ve sat with a notebook in my lap and watched the game. I’ve written a little, but thought a lot, and find that the more I can organize a story in my head, the less writer’s block I encounter when I finally do put pen to paper. Even when I’m just writing at the library, I often wear my Mets cap (a writing buddy calls it my ‘thinking cap’) as a way of channeling the feeling of being at the ballpark. I've also been known to wander my apartment with a baseball mitt, dropping ball into glove absentmindedly—the mind is, of course, somewhere else, and that’s the best part.”
—Sara Novi­ć, author of Girl at War (Random House, 2015)