Did you know?

Aug17

unusual habits

  • Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, and several other writers all wrote standing up.
  • Mark Twain was at his most creative lying down.
  • J.D. Salinger wrote in the nude (I kid you not!).
  • Agatha Christie and D.H. Lawrence wrote in the bath.
  • Vladimir Nabokov wrote on index cards.
  • Gay Talese would pin pages of his writing to a wall and examine them from the other side of the room with binoculars.

What unusual/quirky habit defines your personal writing regimen? A strong cuppa jo to get you started? Listening to classical music while you work? A painfully detailed outline before you get a single creative word on paper (like me)? Even if it’s not quite as outrageous as those of well-known writers, I’d love to hear about it.

Submit your answer in the “leave a comment” block and let’s get some fun ideas rolling.

(If you follow my Blog, you’ll automatically be entered into a draw for a free e-copy of Lucia’s Web!)

Can’t wait to hear from you.

 

The above info was found in these links:
http://writerswrite.co.za/the-unusual-work-habits-of-eight-great-writers
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/teaching-twain-and-huckleberry-finn-with-the-new-york-times/?_r=0

10 thoughts on “Did you know?”

  2. That’s hilarious – looking at his writing through a pair of binoculars. I can’t imagine how that would help, but each to their own. Maybe it helps him get a new perspective. I like to read my book on my kindle as it helps me to see it objectively like someone else’s book, not like a manuscript I’m working on. I tend to pick up more mistakes that way.

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  3. Strangely enough, just this morning I felt the need to write key plot points and character names on little pieces of paper and attach them to long strips of paper, to help visualize the overall flow of my WIP. I was getting myself confused with certain aspects and found this idea worked wonders! So maybe one day I’ll see my name on the writers wall of fame…

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    • For one of my recent novels, I used an old calendar and wrote each day into it. I normally don’t plot like that as I’m a pantster, but the type of book called for careful planning for each day. I may not ever do that again, although I admit, it helped with chronology. It’s very scary to get those things wrong.

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      • I agree! I tend to think in “boxes” and compartmentalize my thoughts, so I have to have some sort of structure when planning my stories. I always use a calendar-type method to some extent. Can’t start to imagine the chaos if I opted for the pantster alternative, LOL!

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  4. When I was a teen, at home, I spent a good bit of my senior year doing my homework standing up. This was partly because the house was cluttered and I didn’t have a desk available … but there must have been another reason I stood on the back side of the “Hi-fi” set and did my work on its top. I later had a newspaper publisher tell me that people think more creatively on their feet.

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