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10 weird writing habits of famous classic authors

Take a look at some of the routines of these famous authors that may help you simplify your own writing process.

Jane Austen

Every writer is in constant search of a solid strategy for their personal daily battle with the blank page. This doesn't only happen to newbies, it even happens to the literary icons we adore.

Take a look at some of the routines of these eccentrics that may help you simplify your own writing process.

Jane Austen

In order to get into the writing mindset, Austen would famously put her pen to the paper and spend half an hour simply jotting down whatever popped into her mind, which would invariably be the phrase “Momma needs a sammich, a big honkin’ sammich!” over and over again.

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Zora Neale Hurston

This iconic luminary of the Harlem Renaissance needed complete silence to focus her mind on what she was writing, so she hired a man whose only job was to plug her ears while she typed.

Toni Morrison

In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Morrison revealed that she cannot begin a single day of writing until she first spends several hours searching all the dumpsters in her town for the body of Amelia Earhart. “I only check dumpsters,” Morrison said, “so if she is not in a dumpster, I will never find her. It is this endless search that drives me to keep writing…to keep creating.”

Victor Hugo

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He wrote both Les Misèrables and TheHunchback of Notre-Dame NUDE, so he wouldn’t be tempted to leave his house. He even had his valet hide his clothes.

Ernest Hemingway

He stood while he met his 500-word-per-day, self-imposed quota. His writing regimen was to be “done by noon and drunk by three.”

Agatha Christie

She wrote while taking baths and eating apples.

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Charles Dickens

He would go for walks (20 miles or so every day) and try to get lost in order to spark his creativity.

William Wordsworth

He would recite his poetry to his dog while taking strolls. If the dog barked or was upset as he read, he would rewrite the draft.

Alexandre Dumas

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He would only write poetry on yellow paper, articles on pink paper, and novels on blue paper.

John Steinbeck

He insisted on writing exclusively in pencil. He used over 300 of them to create TheGrapes of Wrath.

T.S. Eliot

He would tint his face green with powder to look like he was dead.

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