MYSTERIOUS LIVES OF WRITERS WE KNOW

This information, apart from the Mulekwa quote, is from On writers and Writing, 1998 Desk Diary, by Helen Sheehy and Leslie Stainton. In Finnegan’s wake, he replaced the days of the week with “moanday,” tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday. He estimated he spent 20,000 hours writing Ulysses. He advised a writer friend not to plan ahead. Jules Verne: He wrote a lot but never sold until he was involved in Nadar’s project to build a huge balloon and travel across Europe. The balloon was successfully launched but the flight failed which resulted in a depression and his first novel. This book became a bestseller. In writing his 90 novels, Verne followed Dumas’ advice. He wrote everyday from 6:00 until noon. After lunch, he rested, then walked his dog. Charles Mulekwa (Ugandan playwright). (This quote I not from the Writer’s Diary). Inspiration is a very mean thing. If it comes by and you play hard to get, it vanishes. Peter Mark Roget 1779-1869 The word thesaurus in Greek means treasury. “A misapplied or misapprehended term is sufficient to give rise to fierce and interminable disputes.” Jane Bowles Described as a writer’s writer’s writer. “When I was little, I had to imagine that there was some limit to physical pain in order to enjoy the day.” A nurse dropped her when she was a baby; later she broke her leg failing from a horse, and then she developed tuberculosis of the knee, which left her with a limp. She married Paul Bowles and at one time they lived with a cat, duck, parrot, kitten, armadillo. Fanny Trollope, 1779-1863 She wrote her first book, The Domestic Manners of the American which became a bestseller, to save her husband, herself and their 6 children from financial ruin. She began work punctually at four each morning and completed her quota of words before her family rose for the day. Her dedication was such that between 1834 and 1836, when she lost her husband and 2 children to illness, she wrote 3 books…She reaped for bread, and reaped that honour. Mary Webb: 1881-1927 She was 20 years old when Graves’ disease struck her, rendering her an invalid unable to eat, drink, or sit without help. As a child, she had learned from her father to pay attention to its minute parts: bees, flower buds, clover, the effect of wind on a field of grass. Marguerite Duras: 1914-1996 “When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life.” At the height of her career, she produced books at the rate of nearly one per year. She spent her last years in an unorthodox relationship with a young homosexual man.