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"Harry Bruce has fashioned an essential book that is invaluable for any writer facing deadlines, the absence of sobriety, writer's block, an unexpected outbreak of leprosy, or any of the myriad excuses we scribblers use to postpone the agonizing ecstasy of completing our works. Buy it. Read it. And stop procrastinating." - PETER C. NEWMAN
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"Harry Bruce is among the most elegant prose stylists ever to practice his craft in this country - and he's still mystified about the process of writing. So are all the other writers - from the authors of the Gilgamesh epic to Michael Ondaatje - whose tools, techniques, eccentricities and superstitions Bruce surveys in this fascinating volume. The saga leaves one astonished that authors are allowed to walk the streets on their own, without adult supervision - and doubly astonished that the results of their madcap enterprises rank among the treasures of the civilized world." - SILVER DONALD CAMERON
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"Okay, so you know that Truman Capote wrote only in bed, and you knew that Friedrich Schiller could only write if the drawer in his desk was full of rotten apples, and perhaps you even knew that Balzac never drank less than 50 cups of coffee per writing day, or that Isabel Allende was incapable of beginning a new writing project unless it was January 8 - but did you know that Victor Hugo wrote his novels bare-naked in a glass cage affixed to the roof of his house, occasionally pouring cold water over his head and rubbing his torso with gloves made of horsehair? No, I thought not. So you too need this utterly fascinating, sometimes downright scary, exhaustively researched compendium of writers' lifestyles - their superstitions, their foibles, their train wrecks and their triumphs. What a crew!" - ANDREAS SCHROEDER |
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