Weird Writing Habits

(Truman Capote)

We all have own own routines and ways of doing things.  When I write, I pretty much lock myself in a bedroom and don't come out except to eat or use the restroom for months at a time.  Kind of depressing.  What about famous authors?  What do they do?  What are their "weird habits?"

Flavorwire tells us that authors are very different in their writing habits.  Take for instance, Truman Capote.  "Capote would supposedly write supine, with a glass of sherry in one hand and a pencil in another. In a 1957 Paris Review interview with Pati Hill, Capote explains: “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand.”


John Cheever "wrote his works in his underwear."

(John Cheever)

Ernest Hemingway "said he wrote 500 words a day, mostly in the mornings to avoid the heat."

(Ernest Hemingway)

William Faulkner "drank a lot of whiskey while he was writing."

(William Faulkner)

Flannery O'Connor "only wrote two hours a day because of her lupus."  

(Flannery O'Connor)

Vladimir Nabokov "used index cards.  

(Vladimir Nabokov)

Eudora Welty physically "pasted the stories together."  

(Eudora Welty)

All images and info courtesy of flavorpill/flavorwire