Famous writers and their writing processes?

[waryan]

After seeing the outline of Faulkner's A Fable on his bedroom wall, I've been curious about famous writers and famous stories concerning how they went about writing; their processes if you will.

I was wondering if anyone could share anything they've heard, perhaps snippets concerning some favorite writers and their habits.

[sixsmith]

Hi waryan,

You might like to check out the Paris Review's interview archive. Many of the interviews are downloadable in full and contain some great insights into the working processes of various writers:

http://www.theparisreview.com/literature.php

[Dinkleberry2010]

It's said that Hemingway would write two pages and then pin them on the wall. Then he would rewrite the first page, and then write two more pages and pin them on the wall, and then rewrite the second page, and so on--sort of like combing and recombing somthing.

Thomas Wolfe on the other hand wrote standing up in front of his refrigerator (because he was so tall and he just found it more comfortable to stand while he wrote with the refrigerator top as a desk). He wrote fast without regard to grammar, and when he finished a page he would just drop it into a box and go on to another page. Only after a day's writing, which in Wolfe's case was sometimes 50,000 words, would he go back and rewrite or revise or put in order what he had written that day.

[cipherdecoy]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html

[waryan]

thanks everyone for the fantastic responses and furthermore for the excellent links

[Pensive]

Interesting topic, and great links as well :)

[Emil Miller]

I was recently listening to a radio programme about William Somerset Maugham whicn included a recording of an interview made many years ago.
When asked about imagination in writing he said that he had very little imagination, he simply travelled the world meeting and talking to people and used what they revealed about themselves as the basis for his stories.

[Lokasenna]

I did hear a story from one of my teachers, which is probably apocryphal, but I rather liked it, and it sheds some rather interesting light on James Joyce.

Apparently, one day some friends of his came round to his home. After knocking on the door and getting no answer, they let themselves in and discovered Joyce lying on his back on the kitchen table, staring fixedly at the ceiling. When they asked him what was wrong, he cried out:

"Today, I have written five words!"

To which they replied: "But that's excellent for you, James! Really good!" And to this, he shouted:

"Yes... but I don't know what order they go in!"


Like I said, its probably apocryphal, but I rather like the story!

[Dinkleberry2010]

hahaha...you know, that just might be true

[DanielBenoit]

Lol, James Joyce is great. Great great links everyone, this is my favortie current litnet thread.

[wlz]

Groucho Marx gave an interesting account in an interview about the writing HABITS of Ring Lardner, or Ring Lardner Jr...? The writer would book himself into a hotel room, order a bottle of whiskey, smoke cigars, and only when the whiskey was finished would he begin to write! I do not know the truth behind this but it fascinated me.

[Modest Proposal]

I've heard that Philip Roth writes by hand standing at a podium in a barn/studio.

I was told by a CRWT Professor that Hemingway would stop writing mid-sentence so he would have somewhere to pick up when he began again.

I don't know the truth behind either of these but like to believe they are true.

[Dinkleberry2010]

How can one possibly write by hand-standing at a podium? It sounds physically impossible.

[Modest Proposal]

Just found this about Philip Roth: "to stay fit for the long hours he puts in at his writing. He works standing up, paces around while he's thinking and has said he walks half a mile for every page he writes."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/sep/11/fiction.philiproth

The Hemingway anecdote seems verifiable--or at least a verifiably proliferated rumor--through many Google options.

[Dinkleberry2010]

I've read that about Hemingway somewhere before, and Hemingway himself may have mentioned something about it in A Moveable Feast

[Maryd.]

Writers have very strange timings.

I don't really like football and one day an ex partner made me go and watch a match. I got so bored, I wrote three poems and edited them. later that week I sent them off to a competition. They didn't win, but all three got accepted for a publication and I received a small gift and a merit award for one of them. That was 20 years ago and I haven't produced anything worthwhile since. (Maybe I should go and watch another match:redface:)

[Ron Price]

SEARCH

On January 13, 1962, The New York Times had a review of Graham Greene’s(1904-1991) then latest book In Search of a Character. Greene was one of the 20th century's great English authors, playwrights and literary critics. The main character presented in that book, emphasized Charles Poore in his NY Times review, was none other than Graham Greene himself. I was just at the start of my life at the time, in the last six months of grade 12 aiming to do grade 13 in a high school in Ontario and then go on to university. Greene’s book was based, he informed his readers, on his journals which, he also emphasized, were not originally intended for publication. His journals served him as armature for his art and as an outlet for his indignation, observation, rumination and general amusement. Like other novelists, Mr. Greene was consciously and subconsciously on the lookout for characters as he wrote. And, like other novelists, he was also revealing, and naturally so, his own character.

Half a century later I now do the same as Graham Greene, but I perform the exercise in my poetry, my autobiography, my journals and my essays. I go in search of a character and that character is me. Greene tells us that he put his 1959 journal first in this book. In 1959 I was in grade 10, played a lot of baseball, football and hockey, was fascinated by the opposite sex and joined the Baha’i Faith. I had never heard of Graham Greene and only read what I had to read. I memorized everything that came my way in class to get those necessary high marks so that I could keep going to school and thus avoid going into the work force. The summer jobs I got made me more than a little aware of the inevitable menial and boring tasks that existed in society by the truckload for those who did not graduate from high school and go on to university.

The NY Times reviewer of Greene’s book tells us that the one thing Greene keeps before his readers, in addition to his search for himself, is the view that European Africa was and is rapidly disintegrating. He got that right.-Ron Price with thanks to Charles Poore, Books of the Times, The New York Times, January 13, 1962.

Your world, your literary world,
Graham, in those years before the
publication of those journals and
that book In Search of a Character
was as different from the world that
we now inhabit as chalk from cheese;
our world of intrusion, where writers
are bullied, teased and encouraged in
to the open and become part of a huge
massive marketing program and its
exhibitionism: this you were spared.

You were not accessible, Graham.
No signings in bookstores and no
being buttonholed by TV people.
You existed only in your books,
eh Graham? That’s the way I’d
like it to be and I might just be
able to keep it that way on this
world-wide-web where fame is
measured in those nanoseconds.

Wealth is not even on the cards
as my writing is spread across
a 1000 places, sites, with what,
a million readers?!* who never
have to even buy a book. I live,
like you, Graham, everywhere
and nowhere, self-consciously
seek the dangerous edge of life
and admit others slowly to the
inner chambers of my heart!!!

Ron Price
2 August 2010