Submerged in a bath, with apples --
and other weird habits of famous writers
It's hard to say whether writers have more idiosyncracies than other artists, but the ones they have are, ahem, ones for the books. Here are just a few.
Agatha Christie (shown above) found her greatest inspiration while submerged in a warm bath, surrounded by floating apples and snacks.
Jack Keerouac prepared for writing by standing on his head in the bathroom and touching the floor nine times with his toe tips. At one point, he also wrote exclusively by candlelight.
Joan Didion, when approaching the end of a book she was writing, would sleep in the same room as the manuscript.
Maya Angelou adopted a routine of renting a local hotel room when she needed to write. She would then have the staff remove any distractions from the room, like artwork, and brought only her writing materials, a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards, and a bottle of Sherry.
Honore de Balzac believed coffee supercharged his productivity, so he drank up to 50 cups a day.
Dan Brown, best known for his DaVinci Code series, will often hang upside down to process his ideas for books. He will put on a pair of gravity boots and hang from an exercise frame.
Truman Capote insisted on wearing clean, well-polished shoes while he wrote, even if he did not leave his house. He felt this practice put him in a professional state of mind, sharpening his focus and theoretically cleansing his thoughts.
Mark Twain preferred to write while lying down, his feet in a sandbox. He claimed that this connection to a simple, earthly element facilitated a freer flow of ideas.
Frederich Schiller, the German poet, kept a drawer full of rotting apples in his study. He claimed that the strong aroma helped to stimulate his mind and was essential for his writing process.
