Flaubert at Work
From Frederick Brown’s definitive biography of Flaubert, a typical day during the writing of Madame Bovary in 1851-56. Flaubert was 30-35 at the time. Flaubert, a man of nocturnal habits, usually awoke...
View ArticleCreating Billy Bathgate
“He was born in that first sentence, in the rhythm of it, in the syntax. You could even hear his breath just by reading that sentence out loud to yourself.” — E. L. Doctorow on the creation of Billy...
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The Five Commandments
The last couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning up a few final details for my last novel and trying — futilely — to get the next one started. How, exactly, do you start writing a novel? Honestly, I have...
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What Creativity Means
Creativity is not about making something out of nothing. It is about making something new out of old things. When we say that an artist creates, what we mean is that he refines, reshapes, remixes. He...
View ArticleWhy do writers like working in coffee shops?
Writers love to work in coffee shops, and I am no exception. I can’t imagine how many gallons of coffee I have consumed over the years in order to pay the “rent” for a seat at Starbucks. And yes, for...
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The Patron Saint of Writers
I am heartened to learn there is a patron saint of writers, St. Francis de Sales. I suspect I am not the sort of writer St. Francis watches out for (atheist, lapsed Jew, author of wicked books)....
View ArticleThink Quantity
As I read about how creativity works, an idea keeps recurring: Groundbreaking innovators generate and execute far more ideas. Research has shown that the single strongest correlation to innovative...
View ArticleLeonardo, procrastinator
I was heartened (relieved, really) to find this wonderful essay describing Leonardo da Vinci as “a hopeless procrastinator.” Leonardo rarely completed any of the great projects that he sketched in his...
View ArticlePublic Writer, Private Writer
Preparations continue for this winter’s publication of Defending Jacob. The cover art is locked in (sneak preview soon). Yesterday I spent six hours being photographed on Boston street corners in...
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Fast Fish and Loose Fish
In a famous chapter of Moby Dick, Melville explains the law governing ownership of whales at sea. It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company, a whale may be struck by one...
View ArticleGeorge R.R. Martin’s “secret weapon”
I love this: George R.R. Martin writes his novels on a DOS-based computer using a vintage 1980’s word-processing program called WordStar. In this clip, he tells Conan that he actually has two...
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