Friday, January 10, 2014

On the Heels of the Russell Blake Post

The other day I blogged about a WSJ article that discussed the work ethic and writing life of Russell Blake. The article described his prolificness as well as how he wrote.



He churns out 7,000 to 10,000 words a day and often works from eight in the morning until midnight. He spends many of those hours on a treadmill desk, clocking eight to 10 miles.

So, that's a tad odd right? Try these oddities among writers that I found via Mental Floss in their article The Incredible Eccentricities of 20 Great Writers. My favorites?

1. JOHN CHEEVER

The short story guru was like everyone else: He woke up, put on a suit, and went to work. And unlike everyone else, he took an elevator down to his apartment building’s basement, stripped off all his clothes, and wrote in his underwear.

or

6. FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

Schiller worked late at night, so to keep the sandman away, he’d dip his feet in ice-cold water. But it gets weirder: Schiller always wrote with a bunch of rotten apples stowed in his desk drawer. He said the smell motivated him.

and my very favorite:

8. DEMOSTHENES

To keep on task, the Greek orator would shave half of his head because it forced him to stay inside and work. Plutarch writes, “Here he would continue, oftentimes without intermission, two or three months together, shaving one half of his head, that so for shame he might not go abroad, though he desired it ever so much.”

Finally there is this one, that seems like it's quite Russell Blakian in terms of output.

13. HONORÉ DE BALZAC


No one worked harder than Balzac. He’d wake up at 1:00 a.m., write for seven hours, take a nap at 8:00 a.m., wake up at 9:30 a.m., write again till 4:00 p.m., take a walk, visit friends, and call it a night at 6:00 p.m. To fuel all that writing, he threw back upwards of 50 cups of coffee per day.

Perhaps this is my problem. I'm not odd enough in my writing style. All I do is sit at a desk with a cup of coffee.

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