Writing Quotes from Famous Authors

Looking for famous writing quotes? Writers Digest has compiled our editors
favorite quotes about writing to help inspire writers everywhere. Whether youre a
fiction writer, nonfiction writer, or poet, these inspirational quotes on writing will put
the pen back in your hand with renewed passion.

Find Stephen King quotes on writing, Ernest Hemingway quotes on writing, and
creative writing quotes from other famous authors such as Mark Twain, William
Shakespeare, and Henry David Thoreau amongst other famous writer quotes. So put
the pen down for a moment, step away from they keyboard, and soak in these
eclectic author quotes on writing.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.
Stephen King

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

Ernest Hemingway

Its none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were
born that way.
Ernest Hemingway

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are
most economical in its use.
Mark Twain

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poets pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Nights Dream)

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and
passion, it doesnt matter a damn how you write.
Somerset Maugham

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Herman Melville

It is perfectly okay to write garbageas long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldnt give it
up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he
applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, hell eventually make
some kind of career for himself as writer.

 Ray Bradbury

A blank piece of paper is Gods way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
Henry David Thoreau

If you have other things in your lifefamily, friends, good productive day work
these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
David Brin

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the
beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Anton Chekhov

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing
about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
Edgar Rice Burroughs

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!

 Ray Bradbury

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
Willa Cather

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

Words are a lens to focus ones mind.

Ayn Rand

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
Jean-Paul Sartre

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not
conceivable as a writer.
Joseph Conrad

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

Philip K. Dick

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my
suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didnt require any.
Russell Baker

Half my life is an act of revision.

John Irving

People on the outside think theres something magical about writing, that you go up
in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a
story, but it isnt like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and thats
all there is to it.
Harlan Ellison

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish
something you can be judged.
Erica Jong

Dont try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you
have to say. Its the one and only thing you have to offer.
Barbara Kingsolver

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.
Emily Dickinson

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your
headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
E. L. Doctorow

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but its the only way you can do anything
really good.
William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose
fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Gustave Flaubert

Theres no money in poetry, but then theres no poetry in money either.

Robert Graves

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed
that will flower and come to fruition.
Isaac Asimov

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
William Faulkner

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin
with a type, and you find you have created nothing.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing is its own reward.

Henry Miller

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader,
reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from
this state of being.
A. A. Milne

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Emily Dickinson

Only in mens imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable
existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Joseph Conrad

Literature is all, or mostly, about sex.

Anthony Burgess

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Joan Didion

Anecdotes dont make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far
that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes
were about.
Alice Munro

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The moneys in novels,
but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
Larry Niven

Everywhere I go Im asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that

they dont stifle enough of them.
Flannery OConnor

I cant write five words but that I change seven.

Dorothy Parker

Theres no such thing as writers block. That was invented by people in California
who couldnt write.
Terry Pratchett

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash
your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein

The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard
his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together,
and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Reluctantly,
he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.
Richard Wright

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the readers intelligence or whose

attitude is patronizing.
E. B. White

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Oscar Wilde

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the
soul, if not quite inventions of the devilbut there is no way around them.
Isaac Asimov

Fiction is about stuff thats screwed up.

Nancy Kress

In generaltheres no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know were going to

die; whats important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
-Anne Lamott

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to

prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

Anne McCaffrey

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
Ursula K. Le Guin

All the information you need can be given in dialogue.

Elmore Leonard

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the
ones who see five or six of them. Most people dont see any.
Orson Scott Card

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionaryits just a matter of
arranging them into the right sentences.
Somerset Maugham

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a
character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that
exercise, the muscles seize up.
Jane Yolen

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in
your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
Truman Capote

Seven Strange Writing Rituals

ernest.jpg
Finding it difficult to extract the novel that all of us are meant to possess from your
being? Perhaps you're not coming at it from the right angle. And by right angle, we
mean the odd, the weird and the plain wrong...

1. STANDING UP With his reputation for inebriation, you may wonder how Ernest
Hemingway managed to write anything at all. In his later years in Cuba, while
working on The Old Man And The Sea, he ascribed to a done by noon, drunk by
three routine in which he would get up at dawn, write standing up at his typewriter
until hed emptied his head, then empty the famous Floridita bar.

2. LYING DOWN In Cold Blood novelist Truman Capote described himself as a

horizontal author, thanks to his languid approach to his craft. I cant think unless
Im lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee
handy, he told The Paris Review in 1957. Ive got to be puffing and sipping. As the
afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.

3. DRINKING VAST AMOUNTS OF COFFEE Like a lot of people, coffee was Honor de
Balzacs poison. But were not talking the odd espresso. He would drink vast

quantities of black coffee, ensuring that he could write through the day and into the
night, once clocking in 48 hours straight.

4. ACTING OUT DIALOGUE As well as chain-smoking and index cards, the man
behind The West Wing and The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, has a habit of acting
out his zippy dialogue while gazing at his own reflection. In 2010, he worked himself
into such a frenzy that he head-butted a mirror. I wish I could say I was in a bar
fight, confessed Sorkin, but I broke my nose writing.

5. NUDITY In order to stave off procrastination, French novelist Victor Hugo wrote
both Les Misrables and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame in the altogether. Being
nude meant he wouldnt be able to leave his house. As a safety measure, hed also
instruct his valet to hide his clothes.

6. IN A HOTEL A ritual that is at once lavish, pious and debauched: Maya Angelou,
author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, rises at 5am and checks into a hotel,
where staff are instructed to remove all stimuli from the walls of her room. She
takes legal pads, a bottle of sherry, playing cards, a Bible and Rogets Thesaurus,
writing 12 pages before leaving in the afternoon and editing the pages that evening.

7. HEAD-SHAVING Demosthenes was among the greatest statesmen in ancient

Greece. In order to motivate his writing and public speaking practise, its said he
would shave one side of his head. Like Hugo hundreds of years later, it ensured that
he remained in the house working instead of outside looking daft.

10 Weird Writing Habits Of Famous Authors

Aristotle once said, There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. That is
evidently true even for literary geniuses. Heres the method behind the madness of
some of the worlds greatest writers.

1. Victor Hugo
Writers block? Procrastination? Victor Hugo knew both well, or at least we assume
he did and thats why he went to such great lengths to ensure he had no
distractions while finishing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Facing a seemingly

impossible deadline, Hugo bought a fresh bottle of ink and ordered his servants to
take away all of his clothes save for a full-length knit shawl so he couldnt leave the
house. This self-imposed seclusion helped him finished the book before the
deadline. Maybe dont try this one at work.

2. Agatha Christie
Anybody who doesnt think The A.B.C. Murders is the best piece of literature ever
created is just a giant liar. Unsurprisingly, the enchantress responsible for this great
work didnt compose it and the 65 other books (oh, and a ton of short stories,
poems and plays, too) in a mere office. Please, thats for common folk who write
common words. Instead, Agatha Christie wrote in a deliciously creepy hotel room on
a typewriter. She was also known to scribble down pages and pages of disjointed
notes in her notebooks, which there are estimated to be over a hundred of. These
notes somehow fit together to create the story, although sometimes Christie didnt
even know who the murderer was while composing the novel. Apparently she
attempted to create some order to the mess, but that was short-lived. And were
glad because we like our Agatha Christie weird.

3. Honer de Balzac
Coffee is the spark that lights the fire under a productive day. Or sometimes its just
the fuel that helps us stay upright and fake our way through work. But even on our
most exhausted, hungover days, there is a limit to the coffee we are able to
consume. Apparently, Balzac didnt think so though as its estimated he drank up to
50 cups of the stuff a dayblack.

Not into the traditional 9-to-5, Balzac preferred long stretches of work followed by
periods of total relaxation. During his working periods Balzac would wakeup at 1
a.m., write for seven hours, nap for 90 minutes, work from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and
then have dinner and be in bed by 6 p.m. Like, what? Obviously it worked for him,
but as Slate reports, he also suffered from stomach cramps, facial twitches,
headaches, and high blood pressure, and he died of heart failure age 51. The cost
of genius, we guess.

4. Truman Capote
Many of us like to fuel our work with a couple cups of joe, but that can be a slippery
slope; one cup so easily can turn into two then three then ten. And before you know

it, youre like Balzac and suffering from facial twitches. Luckily, Truman Capote had
a failsafe way to never drink too much coffee while writing his masterpieces
(longhand!): drink a lot of other stuff instead.
Capote explained to The Paris Review:
I am a completely horizontal author. I cant think unless Im lying down, either in
bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. Ive got to be
puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to
sherry to martinis.
Pro tip from a literary genius: lay down and get drunk.

5. Edith Wharton
So all of the other writers on this list are really great and Ima let them finish, but
Edith Wharton had the best writing spot of all time. She just stayed in bed all
morning with a pup snuggled under her arm and wrote page after page, which she
dropped to the ground after she was done. A maid would gather the pages and
bring them to her secretary to type up. We can only imagine that Edith used that
extra time to hang out with that her generations Ina Garten and a pile of puppies.

6. Charles Dickens
The best writer of his time, social reformer, all around badass: just a days work for
Charles Dickens. Despite how much you hated him in high school freshman English,
he was pretty impressive and, as one might imagine, it takes a tight ship to reach
those levels of badassery. Like many overachievers, Dickens was known to be pretty
obsessive. He combed his hair hundreds of times a day to keep every hair in place,
rearranged furniture until it felt right enough to concentrate and had to sleep with
his bed aligned north-south because he was obsessed with magnetic fields. He also
preferred to dictate rather than write, and would pace while his assistant wrote. You
do you, Dickens.

7. Gertrude Stein
Errand day: its pretty much the worst. No fun, just all groceries and Target.
Gertrude Stein must have felt the same because she pulled the ultimate con to get
out of them. Instead of accompanying her wife, Alice B. Toklas, on the various tasks
of the day, Stein would stay in their Model T Ford and write. She even made Alice
drive! Like, Oh, sorry, honey! I have to finish writing this award-winning novel
before I can help you lug those groceries to the car! Apparently, the traffic in Paris

inspired Steins writing, although were sure it inspired more rage than prose in
Alice. Another fun fact: they named the Model T Aunt Pauline after Steins aunt
because it always behaved admirably in emergencies and behaved fairly well most
of the time if she was properly flattered.

8. James Joyce
Like Capote, Joyce was fond of writing while horizontal, though rather than supine,
he preferred laying on his stomach on his bed. But that wasnt his weirdest
eccentricity. He also wrote with crayon and wore a white lab coat even while lying in
bed. Unfortunately, his reason was not a ridiculous superstition, but actually kind of
a bummer: he was going blind. Joyce suffered from eye problems his whole life, but
coming down with rheumatic fever at 25 pretty much destroyed his eyesight. The
large crayons he used to write made it easier to see what he was writing and he
said the white lab coat helped brighten the page in front of him.

9. Joan Didion
Aside from quite obviously being a magical sorceress sent by the heavens to give us
the most lovely prose, Joan Didion was also a little bit of a weirdo. Didion said she
needed to have the book she was currently working on in her room with her when
she slept because somehow the book doesnt leave you when youre asleep right
next to it. She also would go home to Sacramento to finish her projects because
she had fewer social obligations there and taking an hour to herself before dinner
with a drink to edit the days writing was essential to ensuring a good start the
following morning. Didion explained to The Paris Review that it cant be earlier in
the day because shes still too close to the book. If I dont have the hour, and
start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, Im in low spirits,
she said.

10. J.K. Rowling

There is a popular myth floating around that J.K. Rowling worked her wizard magic
by writing the first Harry Potter book entirely on napkins. Dont be deceived; its a
total lie. She was, however, on welfare and a single mom to a baby girl, and its true
that she wrote much of the book in Nicholsons Restaurant, but Rowling did use
actual paper. She told CBS: Id walk around Edinburgh pushing [my daughter] in
the pushchair and wait till she fell asleep. And then I would literally run to the
nearest cafe and write for as long as she stayed asleep.

But the idea for Harry Potter started well before Rowling wrote the first words of the
book. It all hit her while her train was delayed for four hours, but she didnt have a
pen to write anything down and had to later rely on her memory of what she
dreamed up. Over the next five years, she sketched out the houses, names (which
she had been gathering her whole life) and a grid of all the major plot points for the
whole series.

9 Weird Habits That Famous Writers Formed to Write Better

PRODUCTIVITY BY AMBER STANLEY

Every writer is in constant search of a solid strategy for their personal daily battle
with the blank page. This doesnt only happen to newbies, it even happens to the
literary icons we adore. Excellent wordsmiths have to wait for their best and
motivated self before they can produce deep and thought-provoking novels and
stories. Along with their drive to work in the ways that best suit them, famous
writers own strange writing rituals also bring meaning to their creations.

Aside from innate skills and intelligence, the greatest geniuses share their potential
with the world by possessing remarkable eagerness and a strong passion towards
their craft. But believe it or not, most famous writers have also adopted bizarre
habits in an attempt to scribble their words down on paper. Many successful authors
were able to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack because of these
quirky secrets. Take a look at some of the routines of these eccentrics that may help
you simplify your own writing process.

1. Lying down
Twain_writing_in_bed_jpg_600x458_q85
Mark Twain writing in bed.
For some authors, lying down seems to set their creativity and focus in writing. They
find inspiration and the right words to write while they are in the comfort of their
bed. Among the successful novelists who have practiced this habit are Mark Twain,
George Orwell, Edith Wharton, Woody Allen and Marcel Proust. They were all known

for churning out pages while lying in bed or lounged on a sofa. American author and
playwright Truman Capote even claimed to be a completely horizontal author
because he couldnt think and write unless he was lying down.

2. Standing up
Hemingwaywriting1
Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up.
In contrast to point 1, writing vertically is also not peculiar for famous writers of
critically acclaimed novels and motivational speeches: writers like Hemingway,
Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, and Philip Roth. These great thinkers
have been inspired to pen their finest pieces at their standing desk. For healthconscious writers, this technique might work for you because standing desks offer
many proven benefits.

3. Writing with index cards

vladimir-nabokov-writing-draft-on-index-cards
Vladimir Nabokov writing a draft on index cards.
Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, was very particular about his
writing instruments. He composed all his works on index cards, which he kept in
slim boxes. This odd method enabled him to write scenes non-sequentially and reorder the cards any time he wanted.

Nabokov also stored some of his lined Bristol cards underneath his pillow. This way,
if an idea popped into his head, he could quickly write it down. You can use index
cards when doing your note-taking or plotting too. Its a different way to construct
your story that can knock fun things loose.

4. Using a color-coded system

Alexandre-Dumas2
Alexandre Dumas
French author Alexandre Dumas wrote his historical adventure novels like The Three
Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo using a color-coded system of writing. It

may be hard to imagine, but this genius was actually very specific on the palettes of
colors for his works. Interesting, right? For decades, Dumas used various colors to
indicate his type of writing. Blue was the color for his fiction novels, pink for nonfiction or articles and yellow for poetry. Why not try applying different colors to your
content creation and see if it can help you express yourself in print.

5. Hanging upside down

Dan Brown
Dan Brown
Hanging upside down is the cure for writers block; at least, this is what the
renowned bestselling author Dan Brown believes. According to Brown, when he does
so-called inversion therapy, it helps him relax and concentrate better on his writing.
The more he does it, the more he feels relieved and inspired to write.

Another unusual habit of the Da Vinci Code writer is having an hourglass on his
desk. Every hour he sets aside his manuscript to do some push-ups, sit-ups and
stretches. Imitating such weird tactics doesnt seem like a bad idea at all. If it helps
you to write, why not give it a try, right? At the very least, youll stay fit!

6. Facing a wall
Francine_Prose
Francine Prose
Francine Prose, the author of Blue Angel, believes that writing while facing a wall is
the perfect metaphor for being a writer. When working in a strange apartment,
Proses solution for limiting distraction was moving her desk to face the window and
looking out on a high brick wall. She found this view monotonous but it helped her
to sit and write for long stretches of time.

7. Acting out dialogues

Aaron-Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin
The award-winning screenwriter behind The West Wing and The Social Network,

Aaron Sorkin, confessed that he broke his nose while writing. How did it happen?
Well, he likes to act out his stories dialogues in front of the mirror, and once, after
getting carried away, he accidentally head butted it. Acting out your story dialogues
is good, but make sure that you dont step over the line and get yourself hurt when
youre structuring your story.

8. Writing without clothes

Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
To complete your writing before a deadline, you may possibly consider Victor Hugos
weird habit writing without clothes. When he was facing a tight schedule for his
novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he instructed his valet to confiscate all his
clothes so he wouldnt able to leave the house. Even during the coldest days, Hugo
only wrapped himself in a blanket while he penned his story.

9. Drinking massive amounts of coffee

Honore de Balzac.jpg
Honore de Balzac
French novelist Honor de Balzac fueled his creative writing by consuming around
50 cups of coffee a day. Yes, thats the amount of coffee he drank every day just to
find inspiration for his written works. Some studies say that Balzac barely slept
when he wrote his magnum opus, La Comedie Humaine. Besides de Balzac, another
coffee-addicted author was Voltaire. He was known for drinking up to 40 cups of
coffee a day

Seven Strange Writing Rituals

ernest.jpg
Finding it difficult to extract the novel that all of us are meant to possess from your
being? Perhaps you're not coming at it from the right angle. And by right angle, we
mean the odd, the weird and the plain wrong...

1. STANDING UP With his reputation for inebriation, you may wonder how Ernest
Hemingway managed to write anything at all. In his later years in Cuba, while
working on The Old Man And The Sea, he ascribed to a done by noon, drunk by
three routine in which he would get up at dawn, write standing up at his typewriter
until hed emptied his head, then empty the famous Floridita bar.

2. LYING DOWN In Cold Blood novelist Truman Capote described himself as a

horizontal author, thanks to his languid approach to his craft. I cant think unless
Im lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee
handy, he told The Paris Review in 1957. Ive got to be puffing and sipping. As the
afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.

3. DRINKING VAST AMOUNTS OF COFFEE Like a lot of people, coffee was Honor de
Balzacs poison. But were not talking the odd espresso. He would drink vast
quantities of black coffee, ensuring that he could write through the day and into the
night, once clocking in 48 hours straight.

4. ACTING OUT DIALOGUE As well as chain-smoking and index cards, the man
behind The West Wing and The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, has a habit of acting
out his zippy dialogue while gazing at his own reflection. In 2010, he worked himself
into such a frenzy that he head-butted a mirror. I wish I could say I was in a bar
fight, confessed Sorkin, but I broke my nose writing.

5. NUDITY In order to stave off procrastination, French novelist Victor Hugo wrote
both Les Misrables and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame in the altogether. Being
nude meant he wouldnt be able to leave his house. As a safety measure, hed also
instruct his valet to hide his clothes.

6. IN A HOTEL A ritual that is at once lavish, pious and debauched: Maya Angelou,
author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, rises at 5am and checks into a hotel,
where staff are instructed to remove all stimuli from the walls of her room. She
takes legal pads, a bottle of sherry, playing cards, a Bible and Rogets Thesaurus,
writing 12 pages before leaving in the afternoon and editing the pages that evening.

7. HEAD-SHAVING Demosthenes was among the greatest statesmen in ancient

Greece. In order to motivate his writing and public speaking practise, its said he

would shave one side of his head. Like Hugo hundreds of years later, it ensured that
he remained in the house working instead of outside looking daft.

Learn from the Greats: 7 Writing Habits of Amazing Writers

inShare
15
Learn from great writers
What you can learn from great writers

By Leo Babauta

Finding the ideal working habits that will allow me to write as consistently as
possible is always something Im exploring as a writer.

As Ive said before, I try to make it a habit to write first thing in the morning. It helps
me to focus and ensure that Im getting my writing done.

I love reading about my favorite writers and what writing habits led to their success.
Below, I share with you some of my favorite writers work habits and its obvious
that theres no single way to success. Some like to write a certain number of words
or pages every day, others were happy to write a page or a sentence. Some liked to
write long-hand, others did it on index cards. Some wrote standing up, others lying
down.

Theres no one way that works. Do what works for you (and share it in the
comments!). But maybe youll get some inspiration from these greats, as I have.

1. Stephen King. In his book On Writing, King says that he writes 10 pages a day

without fail, even on holidays. Thats a lot of writing each day, and it has led to
some incredible results: King is one of the most prolific writers of our time.

2. Ernest Hemingway. By contrast with King, Papa Hemingway wrote 500 words a
day. Thats not bad, though. Hemingway, like me, woke early to write to avoid the
heat and to write in peace and quiet. Interestingly, though Hemingway is famous for
his alcoholism, he said he never wrote while drunk.

3. Vladimir Nabokov. The author of such great novels as Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada did
his writing standing up, and all on index cards. This allowed him to write scenes
non-sequentially, as he could re-arrange the cards as he wished. His novel Ada took
up more than 2,000 cards.

4. Truman Capote. The author of Breakfast at Tiffanys and In Cold Blood

claimed to be a completely horizontal author. He said he had to write lying down,
in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee. The coffee would switch to tea,
then sherry, then martinis, as the day wore on. He wrote his first and second drafts
in longhand, in pencil. And even his third draft, done on a typewriter, would be done
in bed with the typewriter balanced on his knees.

5. Philip Roth. One of the greatest living American writers, Roth works standing up,
pacing around as he thinks. He claimed to walk half a mile for every page he writes.
He separates his work life from personal life, and doesnt write where he lives he
has a studio built away from his house. He works at a lectern that doesnt face the
view of his studio window, to avoid distraction.

6. James Joyce. In the pantheon of great writers of the last century, Joyce looms
large. And while more prolific writers set themselves a word or page limit, Joyce
prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend
asking Joyce in the street if hed had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily.
How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him.

7. Joyce Carol Oates. This extremely prolific writer (see her bibliography on her
Wikipedia page!) has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award.
She writes in longhand, and while she doesnt have a formal schedule, she says she
prefers to write in the morning, before breakfast. Shes a creative writing professor,

and on the days she teaches, she says she writes for an hour or 45 minutes before
leaving for her first class. On other days, when the writing is going well, she can
work for hours without a break and has breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon!

If you enjoyed this article, read 7 Habits of Highly Prolific Writers.