when
it comes to writing im a creature of habit. i cant write not one word without having
a bag of reeses miniature peanutbutter cups right next to me. for every page i
write i get one peanutbutter cup. theres 36 in a regular bag (i counted). if i
ate the whole bag the good news is id
write 36 pages! bad news? id be sick as a
dog. ACK!
i got wondering about famous authors and if they had habits that helped them write. so i went and asked my know-it-all friend mr google. WOW! i found some pretty strange stuff.
truman capote: "I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched onh a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand."
edith wharton: she was a pulitzer prize winning american novelist and short story writer. she liked to write while she was in her bed. sounds good to me. ha ha.
ernest hemingway: he wrote standing up. he wrote 500 words a day in the morning so he could stay out of the heat. "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of s_ _ t. I try to put the s_ _t in the wastbasket."
william faulkner: before he became a writer he liked to drink lots of whiskey. he and a writer friend of his drank lots of whiskey together and chatted til early in the morning. falkner said, "The next morning he'd be working. And, I thought then, if that was the life it took to be a writer, that was the life for me."
ray bradbury: the first thing he did when he woke up in the morning was go straight to his typewriter and start writing. he trained himself to do that.
t. s. eliot: he liked to be called "Captain Eliot." he wrote in his hideaway above a publishing house and upstairs at a nearby lodge. visitors at the lodge had to ask to see "The Captain." he tinted his face with green powder so he could look like a corpse. YIKES! how weird is that!
vladimir nabokov: he loved loved loved index cards. most of his novels were written on 3 x 5 cards. he paper clipped them together and stored them in boxes. he said, "My schedule is flexible, but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers."
eudora welty: she used straight-pins to hold her stories together. she said, "I used to use ordinary paste and put the story together in one long strip, that could be seen as a whole and at a glance - helpful and realistic. When the stories got too long for the room I took them up on the bed or table and pinned them. That's when my worst stories were like patchwook quilts, you could almost read them in any direction ... I like pins."
thomas wolfe: he said, "I use a typewriter. I set myself a quota - ten pages a day, triple-spaced which means about eighteen hundred words. If I can finish that in three hours, then I'm through for the day. I just close up the lunch box and go home - that's the way I think of it anyway. If it takes me twelve hours, that's too bad, I've go to do it."
are you a creature of habit? what habits do you have that help when youre writing?
...big pb cup hugs from lenny
p.s. guess what?!! miss natalie did a interview with me and its gonna be on her and miss caseys fantastical blog at literaryrambles on monday july 17th. WOW! how cool is that!! if you got a little time on monday go read it. thanks miss natalie! :)
