7 Unbelievable Habits You Can Steal from Famous Writers
Writing can be a lonely profession. When your job is to sit by yourself and hammer out page after page, there will likely be days that you lack motivation. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes, inspiration simply runs dry. As in any profession, looking to those at the top of the game can often yield both encouragement and a model of creativity.
The literary arts are no different in this regard: you can find the most nourishing stimulation from the most celebrated writers. From the simple and mundane to the quirky and weird, together we will discover some of the best-kept secrets and literary advice from a curated selection of the most successful and revered writers the world has ever seen.
Seven Secrets for Sundry Writers
1. Write in the morning. Many authors have claimed that writing soon after waking was a big part of their success. Ernest Hemingway, for instance, began writing as early as six o’clock in the morning. During an interview, he said, “When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you.” He speaks the truth on multiple levels. For starters, writing in the morning allows you to approach the work without many other people being up and distracting. Second, you can write without any of the day’s stress or obligations getting in your way because nothing has quite transpired yet.
Hemingway goes on to say that writing for around four hours could be deemed a good — if not exhausting — day. He says, “When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again.”
Essentially, Hemingway’s motivation for writing in the morning is the same as anyone else’s: to get the labor done. He considered the job each day anew and looked forward to the following morning’s writing. Notably, he does not say he wrote in the afternoon if the feeling prompted him to do so. He held off, which he says is perhaps the most challenging part of all: “It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.”
2. Turn off your cellphone. And keep it that way, especially if you’re having trouble getting the writing done. That’s the advice of the talented, contemporary novelist and short story writer Nathan Englander, who says, “Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write.”
This may strike some people as apparent, yet stimulation and distraction inundate and overrun the modern world. Smartphones contribute more than their fair share of such interruptions. So, take your iPhone or Android, turn it on silent, and put it in another room. If you don’t need the Internet for your current project, switch off the Wi-Fi. At the very least, disable any notifications that could interrupt you from being in the zone and prepared to focus on the task at hand: namely, getting words down onto the page.
3. Write badly. Not all the time, of course, but plenty of writers allow themselves to write poorly upfront so that they may edit brilliantly later. Anne Lamott, novelist, essayist, and all-around inspiration to humans everywhere, wrote a book on the craft of writing. In it she speaks about penning terrible drafts: “All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.” The bad manuscript is what leads to the better one, which in turn can be transformed into an excellent draft.
If you imagine that people like Stephen King and James Patterson merely sit down and crank out bestsellers, you are mistaken. Lamott echoes this when she says, “People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars . . . But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated.”
In other words, if you aren’t feeling particularly confident, don’t sweat it. Nearly every writer at any experience level sits down at the computer or typewriter or notepad feeling the same way. Scared, inadequate, shoddy. The list goes on.
To sum it up, know that you are allowed to write poorly. That truth alone can get many back in the writer’s chair and hammering out words with the best of them. Think about it this way: if you don’t get that first lousy draft written, the last great one can’t be written either.
4. Write in bed. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, but as writing is as mentally strenuous an activity as they come, falling asleep during such an undertaking is exceedingly unlikely. That said, the sources of creativity and writing can be quite mysterious, and some beloved authors famously — and exclusively — wrote while lying down.
Robert McCrum mentions that Marcel Proust, one of the greatest writers of all time by most accounts, “always wrote in bed, and perhaps the sinuous, haunting paragraphs of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu bear the mark of that silent twilight zone. Not only did he write in bed; his room was lined with cork, to promote tranquillity.”
George Orwell, author of the classics 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote in bed as well. Apparently, he would set up his typewriter with him in bed and write. This went on even into his final days. McCrum says, “I once spoke to the doctor who treated him in Glasgow. All he could remember was the sound of typing and the fog of cigarette smoke in Orwell’s bedroom.”
If you find yourself at your most comfortable under the sheets, then why not try writing there as well? The very worst that could happen is that you get a good night’s (or morning’s) sleep, and I can fairly guarantee you will feel more like a writer when you wake up to those two most recognizable writerly companions: the blank page and blinking cursor.
5. Go for a walk. That’s right. Taking a leisurely stroll is one of the best things that someone can do to stimulate his or her mind, especially when feeling as if the creative juices aren’t entirely flowing as well as they could. A study out of Stanford University confirms this: “Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after.” In other words, your creativity can not only increase during the walk but after you get back home and begin writing again as well.
To pull a rather famous quote from the Stanford research: Friedrich Nietzsche, writer and philosopher extraordinaire once opined, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” Exaggerated or metaphorical assertions aside, one can pull much truth from this. Going for an easy walk around the neighborhood or local park can bring both health and creative benefits. The writer Raymond I. Myers puts it this way in his poetry: “If you seek creative ideas go walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.”
6. Write naked. One of the more bewildering options that some wildly famous authors have explored is writing in the buff. Supposedly, the lack of physical constraints and distractions makes for a somewhat more freeing experience. Victor Hugo, the famed author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, apparently requested that his attendant remove all his clothes, leaving him alone with just his thoughts, paper, and writing utensils. I believe one would have to say it worked for him. The two books mentioned above are both classics and have been adapted for stage and screen.
Lending yet more credence to the birthday suit writing method is the world’s third highest selling author in the history of literature. The Queen of Mystery herself, Agatha Christie, is said to have written pretty much anywhere and was known to have even worked on her novels in the bathtub.
Whether or not you actually decide to write without wearing any clothes is, of course, up to you. But if you’re having difficulty getting focused, finding yourself easily distracted, or just want to try a brand new angle on the whole creativity thing, it might not be the wrong way to go. Who knows? You could find that your creative thoughts flow more freely in the buff. The next Hugo or Christie could be just waiting to be discovered! Or, should we say, uncovered…
7. Read. This particular advice might strike you as either obvious or counterintuitive, depending on your vantage point. Apart from the act of putting words on paper, though, reading is perhaps the most important way to cultivate within yourself a more profound passion for words, find inspiration from which to pull for your own work, and, as Mary Oliver has said, even save your life. One of our greatest living poets, Oliver wrote, “I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”
Stephen King has written that reading is critical to being a writer. If you are stuck on some arduous passage in your work or are again staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking away madly, you might consider closing the laptop and opening a good book. Books, Oliver goes on to say are the “antidote to confusion” and “can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.” That sounds like a pretty solid prescription for anything from writer’s block to writer’s malaise. So, fire up your Kindle or just pull a book off your nightstand stack and get to reading. You never know what boost of insight or artistry might come jumping off the page and into your brain at any given moment. And reading is fun, to boot!
The Key Takeaway Is This
Many people want to write or even claim to be a writer. The act of sitting down and cranking out words, however, is much more taxing than most would care to admit. As Hemingway himself said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
The essential points to remember here are that you are not alone in your concern, that there exists a wide range of solutions for opening yourself up to creativity, and that sometimes, the wildest suggestion can turn out to be the exceptional piece of advice that enables you to write the book or essay or script of your dreams.
To put it all into one (very long) sentence… Get up early and turn off your cellphone, but consider staying in bed, possibly without clothes on, so that you can write badly, and if all else fails, go for a walk or pick up a book and read so that your creativity can flow freely once again.
