If you are a glutton for punishment/die hard Impish Fan, you will have already consumed the first and second of the pre-existing informative articles detailing the strange writing habits of authors…
I don’t want to keep milking this topic dry but there were a few additional methods which could come in useful to know about – or are just plain wacky – so this is the third and final article on the topic!
Be comfortable: lie down
Truman Capote, perhaps best known for his work Breakfast At Tiffany’s said himself that he was a ‘completely horizontal writer’ – lying down to let the words flow a little easier than contending with the confines of a desk. He also (though not on Honoré’s level) enjoyed a cup of coffee in the mornings and a couple of cigarettes as he transcribed the words directly from his brain – with no written notes – to his first drafts.
Accommodations and accessibility: the big blue crayon
James Joyce similarly wrote Finnegans Wake lying down, though he additionally employed the use of a white coat and a blue crayon. Though it sounds a little random, unfortunately James’ eye problems were getting more severe, so the white coat worked to reflect more light onto the page as he wrote, and the crayons allowed him to see the text more easily.
It comes naturally: baring all!
Victor Hugo, author of such classic works like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables, has a very interesting history. Whether embellished as part of his legend or the real pastimes of an eccentric, his writing routine apparently included nakedness! He would give his clothes to servants and ask them to hide them from him until he had completed a chapter, so that he would have no other distractions.
A new perspective: upside down
Whatever your opinion on Dan Brown is – who is often slated as a ‘bad writer’ – he has an interesting way of banishing indecision and coming up with new ideas. By, very literally, changing his perspective, he uses gravity boots or an inversion table to flip himself upside down!
I can’t explain this one…
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a playwright and poet, who wrote a great many number of philosophical papers, with a particular focus on the aestheticism movement. But he is quoted as having a ‘pile of rotten apples’ in his desk at all times, with the fragrance being one of his inspirations for writing.
Naked and caffeinated
Hopefully some of the above writing methods may be of interest to you – but I wouldn’t recommend suspending yourself over a vat of rotting apples, or lying down naked (unless you are in your own home with the curtains firmly drawn!)
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