Writing Practices of the Rich and Famous

Disclaimer: I’m Not Actually Privy to Their Finances

Welcome to Shelf Life on a fine Tuesday morning, we are all terribly glad you are here. By we we mean me, the Shelf Life staff being a party of one.

The other day, I learned about an unusual writing exercise practiced by the late Hunter S Thompson, and that gave me the topic for this article and, likely, for more like it in the future: Shelf Life on writing practices, habits, and schedules of famous writers. I cannot speak to the writers also being rich. An author might sell very well and still not be rich. Plus, what does rich even mean? Everybody’s idea of wealth is probably slightly different. 

For my part, I assume a writer is probably not rich until and unless they’ve had some kind of telemedia made out of their intellectual property. It’s like when somebody tells you musicians get all their money from touring and you’re like, “but what about all the albums and singles they sell?” Peanuts. There was a brief moment in time when selling ringtones was the key to wealth beyond measure. I suspect Soulja Boy’s fortune was built upon just such a rock.

Anyway, today I’ll introduce you to and talk about three different writers whose practice of writing I’ve known about for some time (in the case of Hunter S Thompson’s, some time means since the other day). My hope is that these practices will either encourage you to try them and see if they work for you or inspire you to create your own variations.

Hunter S Thompson’s Writing Drill

This first example is the one that led me to write today’s Shelf Life. Hunter S Thompson, if you’re not familiar with him, is the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas guy and founder of the gonzo journalism movement.

I’ll begin by saying: Thompson’s best-known writing practice is probably that of getting incredibly intoxicated by both drugs and alcohol before writing anything. This is not the writing drill I’m talking about. If that works for anybody that’s great, and you will find no judgment in Shelf Life, but that is not the drill I’m endorsing.

 Instead, as you can read about in this 2005 New Yorker article that published shortly after Thompson’s death, I’m talking about Thompson’s practice of rewriting—that is, physically retyping—pages from novels he admired by great authors in order to “get the feeling, he said, of what it was like to write that way.” Books Thompson retyped reportedly included The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, and titles by Hemingway as well.

In the author’s own words, taken from a 1997 interview with Charlie Rose: 

If you type out somebody’s work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it’s like music. And from typing out parts of Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald—these were writers that were very big in my life and the lives of the people around me—so, yeah, I wanted to learn from the best I guess.

(You may find that section of the interview starting around the nine-minute mark.)

Going back to gonzo journalism—the other thing Thompson is known for other than the drug novel—for a moment, consider that the hallmark of gonzo journalism is to put a personal twist on the coverage; for the author to insert themself into the story as its protagonist. An early example (by Thompson) is the article “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” in which Thompson covered the sporting event not from an objective perspective but from his experience traveling to and attending the event.

Retyping the work of an author you admire sort of does the same thing; it puts you, the writer, in the shoes of your hero, the author, the protagonist of the story of writing that book. If you try this exercise, consider taking it a step further:

1. Choose a scene from a book you admire or otherwise would like to learn from.

2. Retype the complete scene word for word.

3. Then, rewrite the scene in your own way—for instance, from another perspective, in a completely different voice, or tell it in a different mode (ie, use dialogue instead of exposition or vice versa). Use the same events (plot), but retell the scene and make it your own.

Ursula Le Guin’s Daily Schedule

Several years ago on Twitter, Ursula Le Guin’s writing schedule surfaced in the form of an image, which I’ll embed as an image here:

Where did this schedule come from? As far as I can tell: Originally Le Guin described this schedule in a 1988 interview with Slawek Wojtowicz, which cannot be found on the web. Later, she included it in Ursula K Le Guin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (which I have not yet read). 

Most of us won’t be able to adopt this schedule because we have other obligations during the hours of (checks notes) all the hours. Every single hour. Many or most of us have day jobs and side hustles and caregiving responsibilities and stuff, so we can’t devote the entire day to thinking about writing, actually writing, and reading/listening to music. 

However, I think there are some gems to mine from this daily schedule that anyone might be able to incorporate into their routine, which are:

• Find time to let your mind wander;

• Isolate your writing practice to a specific time of day; and

• Make sure you read.

First bullet: I find the times I have my most creative thoughts are when I’m not thinking about writing (necessarily), but engaged in one of three other activities that require very little concentration from me and thus let my mind wander: Walking (the dogs or just on my own) outdoors, showering, or lying in bed before I fall asleep. I’m not thinking about anything else but I’m also not trying to come up with creative thoughts or focus on brainstorming or writing. My mind just goes wherever it wants and that’s when a lot of the good ideas materialize.

Second bullet: Having designated times (and places, but more on that in a moment) for certain things builds brain pathways that help you do those things faster and more efficiently when you do them at the appointed time. Nobody fact-check this, I just made it up. I’m not a brain scientist. I don’t know if the brain actually builds pathways. But in my experience, when I do something habitually I begin to do it more quickly. Example: I always sit down to write Shelf Life at the same time on the same days. Now, when I sit down to write Shelf Life, I begin writing almost immediately and knock out a couple thousand words in an hour or ninety minutes and then go on with my day. Try to write Shelf Life any other time? I’m more prone to distraction and don’t write as efficiently, because my brain is not in Shelf Life mode at that time.

Third bullet: Becoming good at anything requires some mix of study and experience. Writing is the experience. Reading is (one of the best methods of) study. 

A Room of Ray Bradbury’s Own

A Room of One’s Own is a Virginia Woolf thing, actually, a long essay in which Woolf posited (among other things!) that a woman needs money and a room of her own in order to write fiction; that is, if she has no independent space and means, her life won’t have room for writing. 

Ray Bradbury apparently took this to heart. I remember reading, possibly in Zen in the Art of Writing, that Bradbury took writing very seriously, to the extent that he had to have an office set aside for that purpose. In his early life (before his kids came along), that was the garage of whatever house he happened to be living in. In the morning he would get up, eat breakfast, and dress in business clothes. Then his wife would hand him a sack lunch and he would put on his shoes and—go out to the garage where his writing table was. Later on he moved his “office” to the basement of the library at UCLA, where his toddler children couldn’t tap on the window and bother him.

Bradbury is actually full of writing advice and I’m sure I’ll share more from him another time, but I felt this practice dovetailed nicely with the Le Guin writing schedule because Bradbury’s practice speaks to creating a space in your life for writing or creative pursuit as Le Guin’s practice speaks to creating a time.

Having a designated space for writing, or creativity, or concentrating, can help your brain build those pathways I talked about earlier that may or may not be a real thing. Just as having a habit to do something at a certain time can help you do it efficiently, habitually doing something in a certain environment can also train your brain to do it effectively whenever you’re in that environment. 

Having a designated place for writing helps my brain get into writing mode, but there are other benefits, too. For one thing, I have everything I need for writing right at hand because this is the designated space. I don’t need to go looking for my laptop charger or phone charger or my style manuals or anything because they’re all right here. For another, my partner knows that when I’m in here with the door shut I’m likely to be working or writing, so he uses discretion before knocking and disturbing me. Your mileage may vary, as Bradbury’s did, with household members of younger ages.

Later on, after writing the manuscript that would become Fahrenheit 451 in his makeshift office in the basement of the UCLA library, Bradbury was able to afford a real office and wrote there for the rest of his life.

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