Truman_Capote_by_Jack_MitchellI’e already fessed up. I laze back in an arm chair when I write, and I use a 55″ TV as a monitor.

That way, I’m both comfortable and able to see as many words as possible on my screen—for example, both my work in progress and a Web page.

So what are your own crazy writing habits? Yes, we’ve more or less explored this topic before, inspired by a Lifehacker piece on John Scalzi, but I can’t resist return to it.

To get you started, here is a new twist—some more examples involving famous writers:

  • Truman Capote (photo) liked to write in bed or on a couch while puffing away in a cigarette and sipping sherry. Won’t work for me. I’m a tobacco-hating teetotaler.
  • John Cheever wrote a lot in his undies.
  • Francine Prose wears her husbands pajama pants and writes facing a wall.
  • Eudora Welty, perhaps of a similar mind, faced “the blank surface of her wood dresser” to avoid distractions, according to Trust Essays, a term paper writing service that compiled the information here.
  • Ernest Hemingway would knock it off for the day after doing 500 words. Hmm. Perhaps “Papa” could have used Word or something else with a word counter, so he could spend less time counting and more time writing.
  • William Faulkner drank whiskey on the job.
  • Thomas Wolfe was so tall he could use a fridge top as a desk.

Detail: TeleRead will not run ads or sponsored content from term paper services, and normally I don’t like to give them free publicity, either.

Related: TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows on the gadgets in the bag he carries.

Photo credit: Here. “Truman Capote by Jack Mitchell.”

Featured image credit: Here.

(By way of our friends at Galley Cat.)

3 COMMENTS

  1. I do much of my writing these days with a fountain pen, and make it a firm practice to never use the same color of ink two days in a row. I buy in in 5ml samples….and have a lot of fun with them. My journals look…colorful.

    • Furthermore, no three-letter agency or rapacious search engine can know what I am thinking. I recall writing a blog post about my father’s death, and was deluged with ads for funeral homes, coffins, and annuities. That set me thinking about privacy…and appropriate venues…and disk crashes, too.

      With my paper journals, I can easily add silly illustrations, paste in clippings, and write outrageous opinions without worrying about lawsuits or persistent cookies trailing me around the Internet.

      It took close to a year before my handwriting was readable again after years and years of typing, but it was worth the effort. The books I am writing will never be published, but my nearest and dearest can read them and laugh. My current story is all about the growth habits of the Doughnut Bush (with pictures!).

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