Mysteries of Writing 1

How did he do it? Do you ever wonder how? I do. I mean: he had a job, a full time job – no part-timing for him -, and yet found time to write at least that many thousand words a day. Someone told me, or I read it somewhere. He set himself the task of writing several pages a day. Nothing extraordinary in that I agree but write I mean, not type. He used to get up really early and start to write before he left for work. Dressed, had breakfast, the whole lot, before he started writing or between the writing and the leaving for the job whatever – I’m not sure what came first for him. That on it’s own I find a feat. Have you ever accomplished it?

I can manage getting up quite early, brush teeth, shower, put on clothes and stuff a kind of breakfast down my throat, then hurry on my way to work. But to put in several pages before all this? I can manage sliding into my writing chair behind my laptop in pyjamas at what I deem ungodly hours like 5 or 6 o’clock to punch away. But keeping an eye on a clock to ensure I slide behind an office desk on time while dreaming up other lives and events? Can you manage that?

And do you know what puzzles me most? Nowhere do I find any mentioning of revision. If you know when he put in his revising and rewriting; the pruning, the cutting, the adding and rephrasing and so – please enlighten me. You see, as an aspiring writer I am so interested in finding out how published, successful writers like him managed to juggle their career with a job. Aren’t you?

It is a mystery to me. Whom I’m talking about? Oh – just Anthony Trollope, dear, you know.