wonderful passage around it, in Anthony Trollope's autobiography. It
describes how he wrote a bunch of novels despite having a more than
fulltime job as postmaster general. Because I am fascinated with details
of how any successful creative person works, and love this passage for how
it confirms that a good system will cleverly take into account your
emotions, I reproduce a huge chunk of it, at the cost of the pithiness
that should be the virtue of the blogger over other writers:
--
There was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the
publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office. I was
free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake
this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by
certain self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have
always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the
period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work. In
this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so
that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the
record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and
demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be
supplied. According to the circumstances of the time,--whether my other
business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was
writing was or was not wanted with speed,--I have allotted myself so many
pages a week. The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as
low as 20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my
page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched,
will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I
went. In the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of
course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always to
supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of hand
short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the excess has
been very small. I have prided myself on completing my work exactly
within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself especially in
completing it within the proposed time,--and I have always done so. There
has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an
insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so
disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.
I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of
genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been
so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing
surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force
of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, If it be
really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the
tortoise which always catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses
more time in glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the
tortoise to make half his journey.
I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful
because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as
boys struggling to learn their lessons as they entered the school gates.
Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best
because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their
work--though burdened with another profession,--and have done it almost
without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt
myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety
as to "copy." The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost
always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates
and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand
upon my industry, has done all that for me.
There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a
taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination
should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves him. When I have
heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.
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