Balzac was not only one of the greatest writers who ever lived, but he was also a great coffee-drinker. He wrote at night, only black strong coffee, and until morning it wasn't unusual for him to have drunk 10 or 20 cups. According to researcher, working for his neverending cycle of novels and stories, he could have drunk over 50.000 cups of coffee. So, when he cut down to just three cups of coffee a day, due to health reasons, it was truly a sacrifice for Balzac. Mark Twain was a passionate smoker, and he preffered smoking his pipes, especially his corn-cob popular type, cheap and reliable, but also from time to time a huge, impressive calabash. Like Tow Sawyer and Huck Finn, he carried the bowl of his corn-cob pipe in his tobacco pouch, and when he felt the need for a pipe he simply pulled the corn bowl out, filled with tobacco, inserted the stem and puffed away. As for writing, he preffered doing it in bed.
Charles Dickens, one of the best and most famous novelists of all times, wrote everyday and was a frightening prolific author. In no small due to his passion, but also due to his commercial success, he had to write quickly, so he used usually blue ink. Not for cost or aesthetic reasons, but because Dickens had noticed that blue ink dried the quickest. And it was also the most affordable.
Ernest Hemingway liked to type his works on his faithful typewriter, which was placed on a tall desk, which reached to the chest of the author. And the writer preffered standing up while he typed, and always ended put a stop until the next day only when he was sure how the story would go on. His minimum quota was 500 words.
Stephen King is one of the most succesful contemporary authors, but he wasn't always clean and sober. At the beginning of the 80s, due to his drugs and drinking, he wrote books, good ones even, that he later didn't even remember putting down on his typewriter or word-processor. One such a book was Cujo.
Photo: wikipedia.org
May 2016
