So just how do they do it? How do our favorite writers seem to churn out so many wonderful books? I want to know what’s in their morning coffee.
Read this funny essay by Alex Beam of the Boston Globe: The dope on prolific writers. “Why didn’t I realize this earlier?” asks Beam. “It explains everything. How can, say, Christopher Buckley, who is my age and attended the same sort of white-glove finishing schools that I did, have so outstripped me? He has written 11 books, innumerable humor articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He edits a magazine, Forbes/FYI, and, for all I know, he’s a regular on one of those prestigious TV shows I never watch because all the panelists are younger and more successful than I am. Put another way: Has Stephen King submitted to a blood test lately?”
The best paragraph: “There is, of course, the old-fashioned explanation for why the Buckleys, the Winchesters, and the John Updikes of the world make the rest of us look like clock-watching quill-pushers: hard work. But I have dismissed the possibility that these writers might have studied harder in school, read more books, or spent more hours at the desk than a grasshopper such as I. Or that they are simply more gifted than I am. They must be on something.”
