( and one that many of the Brain Pickings quotes are from) are the Writers At Work interviews from The Paris Review, all of which are available online. While there aren’ t many screenwriters on either list, a rose is a rose, and reading other writer’ s habits can be instructive as well as reassuring, if only because you realize that you’ re not the only one out there who has to sharpen exactly five pencils and flip a light switch three times( the line between OCD and inspiration can become fuzzy) before the muse will arrive.
E. B. White said famously,” A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” He also said:“ I never listen to music when I’ m working. I haven’ t that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn’ t like it at all.”
Probably as a consequence of the digital age, most writers I know write to some sort of music( I wrote the first draft of a novel to a very specific playlist, timed out to produce the word-count needed for the day.) However, some writers can’ t take the added sensory distraction— or any other distraction for that matter. Not even clothes. Several famous writers, including Hemingway and Victor Hugo, worked sans garments. Rumour has it that Hugo would ask his servant to take his clothes away for an entire day if he was having writer’ s block, so he would be forced to sit down and write( since— what else are you going to do when you’ re naked?)
Other writers have other particularities and obsessions. Jack Kerouac was haunted by numbers:
I’ m hung up on the number nine though I’ m told a Piscean like myself should stick to number seven; but I try to do nine touchdowns a day, that is, I stand on my head in the bathroom, on a slipper, and touch the floor nine times with my toe tips, while balanced –
And also noted the time and place he worked: Midnight till dawn, a drink when you get tired, preferably at home, but if you have no home, make a home out of your hotel room or motel room or pad: peace.
Redoubtable American intellect Susan Sontag noted that: I write with a felt-tip pen, or sometimes a pencil, on yellow or white legal pads, that fetish of American writers. I like the slowness of writing by hand. Then I type it up and scrawl all over that— I write when I have to because the pressure builds up— once something is really under way, I don’ t want to do anything else. I don’ t go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little.
This is a common theme; it’ s almost as though writing is a courtship process. One approaches the muse sideways, coolly, not wanting to seem overeager. But once it has been won over, it’ s a sprint to the altar. The poor writer worried that the fickle spirit of inspiration will lose interest and make him a cuckold, taking up with some other( no doubt less talented) writer. And, last but not least, some advice from Ernest Hemingway: hemingway _ B
I write every morning as soon after first light as possible— You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again— Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
Perhaps he used alcohol( Hemingway wrote standing up at a lectern, while extremely hungover) to kill time between writing. I know for myself that when I am in the middle of a project, very little else matters. I’ ve also never written anything substantive while in a relationship, probably because most writers are insufferable to be around.
ORIGINAL Publisher
Ernest Hemingway
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