Couples. John Updike
This fascinating book by David Lodge, writer and critic, is a collection of essays which study the interface between real lives and how they are written about. The sections exploring the working methods of writers I found particularly revealing.
There’s a chapter that discusses the challenge facing the biographer of Muriel Spark, the Scottish writer who is variously described as ‘eccentric and unpredictable’, while ‘some thought she was a little mad’, and further ‘some acquaintances regarded her as a kind of white witch.’ Spark didn’t start writing novels until she was thirty-nine, and she then went on to produce twenty-two novels at the rate of one per year, most well known amongst them being The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The Times named Muriel Spark as No 8 in its list of “the 50 Greatest British writers since 1945.”
Kingsley Amis, meanwhile, turned out novels every two years or so, adhering as he did to a “lifelong discipline of writing every morning between breakfast and the first drink at noon.” Later in life, with his health and morale in decline, it took him four years per novel.
Graham Green had a routine that ensured he could write his target of 500 words per day, which later contracted to 300. It seems to be a recurring theme among the writers that they adhere to a strict ritual, even if, as in Greene’s case it was “agonisingly difficult.”
I did some further exploring, on the subject of daily wordcount.
Hemingway once said, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” Having achieved that, he went on to be a 500 words a day man.
Ian McEwan: “I aim for about six hundred words a day and hope for at least a thousand when I’m on a roll.”
The prolific Stephen King sets a daily goal of 2000 words.
J.G.Ballard, who brought us Empire of the Sun, and its sequel which I very much enjoyed, The Kindness of Women, said, “All through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day – even if I’ve got a hangover. You’ve got to discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.”
They all have their own way. Mine is getting up pre-dawn every day. At 4:15am, I prepare a pot of tea and off I go. I manage about 300 words, before beginning my elsewhere working day. On weekends, I push for 500 per day, 600, if, as McEwan said, I’m on a roll.
Lives in Writing. David Lodge. Vintage Books. 2014.
