Sunday, April 09, 2017

What Writers Say, Part 1: James Jones on the Incremental Nature of Writing

Author James Jones did not think big when it came to daily literary output. He knew the math: a few words a day mean many more per week and exponentially more per month. In a Paris Review interview He looked for two or three typescript pages per day of narrative and maybe ten to twelve of dialogue. The next day he would read what he had written before moving on to the next two or three pages.

That level of productivity might not seem like much, but it produced From Here to EternitySome Came Running, and The Thin Red Line, among other works.