"In all artistic activities, the work of the novelist is the most unpretentious, concrete, and unromantic."
—Flanari O'Connor
When reading a literary work, whenever you read something shocking and inspiring, you will always sigh in your heart: Writers are indeed born! Talent, talent, seems to drown out the day-to-day efforts of writers to unleash their writing potential. However, for those who regard writing as a lifelong career and lifelong ideal, daily writing practice is the only thorny road to victory.
Many established writers treat writing as a daily, fixed action, as indispensable as eating or sleeping. Few writers follow the advice of Martin Amis, the "godfather of literature" in Britain, to "work only two hours a day". From Asimov to Haruki Murakami, from David Foster Wallace to Kafka, every accomplished writer and their most widely known work is the product of coffee and sweat.
However, every writer's creative habits are different. Some people pick up pens in the cool morning, some people wear stars and wear the moon; some people can't leave coffee, some people must have a cat by their side; some people have to follow strict routines every day, some people sneer at daily routines; some people lock themselves in simple hotel rooms, some people claim that there are ten thousand parties around them that can't affect his writing... But we can still distill some commonalities from this: Zadi Smith's exhortation to her fellow writers: "Don't romanticize your profession." You either write good sentences or you can't write them. There is no such thing as a 'writer's lifestyle'. What you leave on the page counts. ”
Early
The most widely known morning writer is Hemingway, who in "The Flowing Feast" has created the image of a writer who writes in the quiet early morning of Paris, the figure who lives in Paris, and still lets people closely associate the morning with perseverance and the beauty of creation.
Hemingway in writing
John Born
I usually sit at a table around 7:30 in the morning. I was the most inspired, optimistic and passionate in the early morning.
Haruki Murakami
The time of day when the body is most active varies from person to person, and I am in the early morning hours. Focus on getting important work done during this time.
Leo tolstoy
I always write in the morning. I'm glad to learn recently that Rousseau was the same way, getting up in the morning and taking a short walk and then sitting down to write. In the morning, the human mind will be particularly clear. The ideal idea tends to come up before you get up in the morning, during a walk, or after a walk.
Tom Perrotta
I write in the morning, and by this time, my brain is clear and the coffee is relatively fresh.
night owl
Not all writers are most inspired in the morning. Some writers, including Flaubert, Kafka, and Dostoevsky, could not write until they were at a standstill, as if the night were the great companion of creation.
H.P. Lovecraft
▲ H.P. Lovecraft, the founder of the Cthulhu Mythos
At night, when the outer world slips back into the cave, leaving the dreamer in opposition to himself, inspiration and talent that do not appear in any moment when it is not quiet enough or lacks magic will follow. A person who has not tried to write at night will not know whether he is a writer or not.
Franz Kafka
Kafka's biographer Louis Begley points out that Kafka worked from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., then at lunch, slept for four hours, worked out, had dinner, and didn't start writing until eleven o'clock in the evening. He wrote letters and diaries first, which was about an hour or more. When he started writing novels, it was usually already 00:00 or 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. or even 3:00 a.m. Suggested that he could better organize his day, he said: "At the moment it is the only possible way; if I can't afford it, it will be worse; but I'll have to bear it anyway." ”
With a pen, turn off the computer
Modern people have been spoiled by laptops and smartphones. Fortunately, there are still some writers who can recognize the magic of handwritten writing.
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
I use felt-tip pens, or sometimes pencils, to write on yellow or white notepads, a pennish for American writers. I like the slowness of handwriting.
David Foster Wallace
When I write serious works, I write with my own pen... The first, second or third draft is always written with a pen. I type much faster than I can write by hand, but handwriting slows me down in some way, which helps me focus.
Tom Perrotta
I would sit in a small room on the top floor of my house. I started using a pen a few years ago and am grateful for the messy scene it caused. The pen makes writing feel like a manual labor. I have to create something new before my day is over.
Form a set of work and rest rules
There is a category of writers who demand themselves strictly according to the "ascetic" writing schedule. Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Cancer, once formulated for himself the "Ten Commandments for Writing," which included: "You can pause and continue the next day." Focus, focus, focus" and "write first, always write" and other rules. In the lives of these writers, writing novels is by no means a romantic act, but a strenuous physical labor that requires perseverance.
Alice Monroe
I write every morning for 7 days a week. I started writing around eight o'clock and ended around eleven o'clock. I have such a strong obsessive-compulsive disorder that I have to prescribe to myself the number of pages to complete. I also force myself to walk three miles a day.
Steven King
I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. Every morning, within half an hour from eight to eight thirty, I would sit down at some point.
Steven King
I have my vitamin pills and my music, sitting in the same seat, all the documents in the same place. Doing these things every day in the same way seems to be saying to the brain that you will soon start dreaming.
John Grisham
The alarm would go off at five and then I would jump into the bathroom. I only had five minutes to go to the office. And I had to go to the office, sit at a desk, face the first cup of coffee of the day and a paper book, and write the first words at 5:30. This is true five days a week.
John Born
I worked in a bookstore in Dublin in my twenties and got up at five o'clock every day to write before work. In the twenty years since, I have never given up on such a routine. Malcolm Bleberley was in his final year of teaching the Master of Creative Writing at the University of Eastern Anglia, when I had the privilege of taking his classes. I always remember his advice: we should write every day, "even christmas." Most of the time, I've stuck with it. When I'm not writing, I don't quite know what I can do.
J.G. Ballard
Throughout my career, I've been writing a thousand words a day, even on hangover days. If you want to make this a career, you have to hone yourself. There is no other way.
Isaac Asimov
Thinking is my favorite activity, and writing for me is thinking through my fingers. I could write eighteen hours a day, typing ninety words per minute. I can write more than fifty pages a day. Nothing interfered with my attention. Even if you put on a carnival in my office, I won't even look at it —well, maybe just a glance.
Don't get routine
There are staunch guardians of the rules, and there are people who scorn the rules. For these writers, all they need is enough paper, and then the next thing will naturally come to fruition.
Ray Bradbury
Every day of my life, my enthusiasm drove me to sit in front of the typewriter, from the time I was 12 years old. So I never have to worry about scheduling.
Ray Bradbury
I can work anywhere. I grew up in a small house in Los Angeles, living with my parents and brothers, and I was writing in my bedroom and living room. I was in the living room on the typewriter, the radio on, mom, dad and brother all talking at the same time. Later, when I wanted to write Fahrenheit 451, I went to UCLA and found a basement typing room where you could buy 30 minutes of typing time if you put 10 cents into the typewriter.
John Owen
I don't have a special break or work time, I don't have a work schedule... When I started writing a book, I could write for at most two or three hours a day. Halfway through writing, I could write for eight or nine hours a day or twelve hours a day, without rest—if my children didn't bother me. They don't usually come... It's not hard to spend eight hours a day in front of a typewriter, and it's not hard to spend two hours at night reading what you've written. That's habit.
motion
People who have not had a long experience of writing may not appreciate what a physical exertion is in writing. To consistently write good sentences, the necessity is often not alcohol or hallucinogens, but a good body. As Haruki Murakami has told us, "Writing a novel is like survival training." Physical strength is just as important as artistic sensitivity. ”
Kurt Vonnegut
I get up at half past five, work until eight, have breakfast at home, work until ten o'clock, then walk a few blocks to town, do some chores, swim in the nearby municipal pool for half an hour, and then come home at eleven forty-five, read mail, have lunch... I've been doing push-ups and sit-ups.
Don Derrillo
I work in the morning in front of the manual typewriter. I worked about four hours and then went for a run. It helps me get out of one world and into another. Trees, birds, drizzle – it was a good episode. Then I worked again, in the late afternoon, for two or three hours.
Haruki Murakami
I would get up at four in the morning and work five or six hours. In the afternoon, I run 10 kilometers or swim 1500 meters (or both), and then I read and listen to music.
▲Haruki Murakami
I went to bed at nine o'clock at night. I keep this habit every day and nothing changes. Repetition itself becomes important; it's a form of hypnosis. I hypnotize myself to reach a deeper level of mind.
Drink coffee
Many writers, including James Joyce, either soak in cafes or are on their way to them. Even if you create at home, you must have a good cup of coffee on the table.
Toni morrison
I always get up when it's still dark to make a cup of coffee – it must be dark – and then I drink coffee and look at the light...
C.S. Lewis
I would choose to always eat breakfast at eight o'clock and sit at my desk at nine o'clock, where I would read and write until one o'clock. If at eleven o'clock someone could bring me a cup of strong tea or coffee, it would be great.
David Lynch
I've been eating at Bob's Big Boy for seven years. I'll go at 2:30 after the lunch rush and then have a chocolate milkshake and another 5-7 cups of coffee. I would put a lot of sugar in both the shake and the coffee and shake violently to hear the sugar cubes clanging and colliding. Immediately after that, my inspiration collided. I'll write these ideas on napkins – of course, you have to remember to bring a pen.
Do not drink alcohol
Unlike many people's fantasies about writers, the destructive power of alcohol may be far greater than their contribution to literary history.
F.S. Fitzgerald
It became increasingly clear to me that the perfect structure of a long work, or the excellent understanding and judgment of its revision, did not match spirits. Short stories can be written with a drink, but to write long stories, you need to have the speed of thought that allows you to keep the whole pattern in your mind, and to ruthlessly abandon secondary plots like Ernest (Hemingway) wrote "Farewell, Weapon".
▲ Hemingway vs Fitzgerald
If you think even a little slower, you can't see the whole picture of the book, but only individual parts of it; the brain becomes dull. If I hadn't been drinking when I wrote the third part of Gentle Night, I would have given anything. If I had the opportunity to try again when I was fully awake, I believe there might be a big difference. Even Ernest commented that there were parts that did not need to be written into it, and that as far as I know, his evaluation as a master can be used as a decisive reference.
With the help of tools
Cigarettes, photos, index cards, and even coffins, novelists need props to bless them—after all, muses are often late.
Natalie Goldberg
When I sit down to write, I often have a cigarette in my mouth... I don't smoke anyway... Smoke is a prop that helps me fantasize about entering another world.
Don Derrillo
I looked at a picture of Borges. Borges's face was fierce and blind, his nostrils open, his skin taut, and his mouth surprisingly vivid; his mouth looked like it was painted; he was like a shaman painted for visions, with a steely ecstasy all over his face. Of course, I've read Borges's books, and I don't know anything about the way he works — but this photo shows a writer who didn't waste his time in a window or anywhere else. So I tried to get him to be my guide, to get out of drowsiness and wandering, and into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.
Hillary Mantel
When you're ready to start writing a book, a lot of ideas pop up before you write anything down on the paper. It's important to capture these reflections. I'll bring a small notebook that can easily tear off the paper; or I'll bring a 3-inch × 5-inch index card. I try to write down every thought, every vague feeling about what the book will look like, even if it's just one word. When I had a few of these cards, I nailed them to cork—there was a bulletin board in the room where I worked.
Suck the cat
Who would say no to a kitten?
Colm Tobin
Because I have a house in the western part of Ireland and the neighbour there also has a cat, I love that cat. Because I often have a companion when I write in the afternoon, after I find good cat food in the supermarket, I will lure the cat to my house in the afternoon, let the cat accompany me to write, and then put the cat back.
Muriel Spark
If you want to be engrossed in certain issues, especially some writing or paperwork, then you need to have a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I would explain that the cat will always jump on your table and lie contentedly under the lamp. I would argue that the light of the table lamp will make the cat very satisfied. The cat will lie down, will become serene, and this tranquility will be forgiven. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually affect you. You sit at your desk, and all the easily excited personalities that hinder your concentration subside, and your head regains the self-control it once lost. You don't have to stare at the cat all the time. The presence of cats is sufficient in itself. The role of cats in your concentration is quite significant, very incredible.
A room of your own
To write, you first have to have your own room—100 years ago, Virginia Woolf's cautionary tales still apply to the 21st century, and for both men and women. Hotel rooms, temporary rented houses, even an office, writers always need some proper "isolation."
Jonathan Franzen
Presenting a world is about allowing yourself to feel small things intensely, rather than knowing a lot of information. As a result, I have to isolate myself in the office when I work because I am easily distracted, and modern life has become extremely distracting.
Jonathan Franzen
Interference is pervasive, especially over the Internet. And most of the noise that poured in was meaningless noise. In order to hear what's really going on in the world, you have to block out 99% of the noise. There's still a lot of information in the remaining 1 percent, but not enough to make you hopeless about transforming it into a meaningful story.
Maya Angelo
I worked in a hotel room – a small, humble room with only one bed and sometimes, if I could find it, a washbasin. I have a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry. I tried to get there around seven o'clock and worked until two o'clock in the afternoon. If the work doesn't go well, I'll stay until half past twelve. If it goes well, I'll stay there.
Forget about discipline and be comfortable
Writing is a chore. So why not just make yourself comfortable?
Truman Capote
Either lie on the bed or on the couch with a cigarette and coffee in your hand. I had to take a big gulp. As the afternoon passed, I switched from coffee to mint tea, to sherry, to martini.
Patricia Haysmith
Mason Currey, a biographer of Highsmith, tells us that the female writer apparently didn't like any bondage: She sat on her bed, surrounded by cigarettes, ashtrays, matches, a cup of coffee, a donut and a plate of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the writing process as pleasant as possible.
Forget about that much, just write it right
E.B. White
Thankfully, my wife has never protected me as much as the wives of some writers. As a result, my family members never noticed that I was a writer – they did everything they could to make noise and make a fuss. If I'm tired of these, I also have somewhere to go. A writer who waits for ideal working conditions will die before he can write a word.
Judy Pickcourt
For many years, I had to squeeze time out of my childcare schedule to write, which also allowed me to develop very strict discipline. I write fast, and I don't believe in the bottleneck period because I didn't believe in this before. When you have twenty minutes, you write—whether it's garbage or not, you just write it and then you improve it later.
Jeff Dyer
Over the years, I have come across several places with ideal working conditions. For example, a room in Montepulciano, Italy, with a cute wooden bed and a white mattress, can jump from the window to the idyllic view of Tuscany, and the balcony was once a small bridge connected to the building next door. Or a room in Rozan, France, overlooking a wheat field, where the paper on the table is dyed red in the evening if you sit facing west. Or my apartment on the rue de Popicate in Paris, with a ceiling-high floor-to-ceiling window on Rue Hougette, with the farthest view of the Bastille.
What the ideal place for all these jobs has in common is that I've never done any work there. The ideal work environment is precisely the worst possible work environment.
*The pictures in this article are from the network
Read the recommendation
Becoming a Writer: Caprice and Advice from Great Writers
Author: [English] Travis Elborough / [English] Helen Gordon
Publisher: Chongqing University Press
Translator: Wood grass
"Becoming a Writer" is a light-hearted book about the "art of writing" with interesting and practical functions. This book covers the thoughts and opinions of nearly 200 writers on "how to become a writer" and then "how to live" in the 250 years from the 18th century to the present. From Dickens to Monroe, from Wilde to J.K. Rowling, the author distilled their serious or humorous writing experiences and opinions by sorting out the diaries, letters, public speeches, works and other texts of these writers, and the writers in different eras seemed to be in dialogue in the interlacing of time and space, and also constituted a modern literary history that was on the edge of the sword.
Paris Review Interview with Women Writers
Author: Editor, Editorial Board, Paris Review, USA
Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House
Translator: Xiao Haisheng et al
As the first interview special of women writers in the history of the Publication of the Paris Review, Interviews with Women Writers includes interviews with sixteen female writers such as Hilary Mantel, Elena Ferrante, Simone de Beauvoir, Janet Winterson, Elizabeth Bishop, etc. These sixteen interviews can also be regarded as "prose in dialogue", which is both a very high-level discussion of writing techniques and covers the subtle but refractory details of the lives of female writers.
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