A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY
People take an almost uncanny interest in how books get written. Where does the author sit? Does he write in longhand? At what time of day? Does she have a bottle of bourbon at her elbow? How do iPads figure in? How often does she check e-mail? There are notions, which are not entirely off base, that writing should be done in a solitary location with a view of a rolling landscape.
Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, wrote his books on index cards and shuffled the scenes around. You can see some of the cards at his boyhood home, which is now a museum of sorts, in St. Petersburg.
Anthony Trollope, Victorian-era author of forty-seven novels, wrote for three hours each morning.1 If he finished a novel before the three hours ...
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