Cormac McCarthy's Writing Routine Revealed
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
- What was Cormac McCarthy's writing routine? Did he write in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Where did he write? In this video, I will review what we know about Cormac McCarthy's writing routine, using information from interviews, the Cormac McCarthy archive, and other fragments of knowledge from across the internet.
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I'm getting your book when it comes out ian. If it fails to impress i'm unsubscribing. If it does impress, i'm staying subscribed. no pressure.
Writing a novel is like lifting weights. You hammer the keyboard for 45-60 min 3-4 sometimes 5 times a week, the rest of the time is spent eating and sleeping to prepare for the next session. Imo.
Writing isn’t only hammering the keyboard. It is researching, rewriting and so on. It’s investing time into your work wether it’s literally writing or consuming or educating.
You’re an interesting guy, Ian. And you’re doing a good job marketing yourself. I don’t know the quality of your work, but I’ll buy a copy of your book when it’s out.
Also, an idea for a video for the channel or your schooled website - a prose analysis of Cormac. I write without quotation marks, so I do a deep dive into No Country to learn how Cormac does it. That’s where a ton of my growth as a writer has come from. I teach my students that writing is actually listening, and you’ll always know who’s speaking if the writer is good even without all those unnecessary marks on the page.
Hell, maybe I should just make that video lol.
Main Points - Work when good for you (eg afternoons), go for walks to help shift between projects/tasks and getting inspiration from nature, “luck” (though I disagree how this is framed - likely your draft ending up on the reject pile isn’t luck but because it wasn’t good!).
11:33 Talking about being out in nature. I was at the beach last weekend. I live in Vancouver and summers around here are a big deal. I know of a cool beach and I was swimming and I saw a grey whale. It was not like in the movies or whatever. I saw air spray up like a whale does and I thought _I wonder what that was?_ It kept coming up and blowing air. All I saw was a huge grey back and the air blowing up with the *foosh* sound. It was cool as shit.
Whales are the best! That sounds like such a cool experience.
Thomas Pynchon apparently wrote with a mechanical pencil on graph paper through the the night, then typed and edited on a typewriter.
My writing routine is hectic. I'm garbage with routines. It's not adhd brain or some other thing. It's just my creative process.
My creative well is a bladder. I piss out a mixture of what my body produces as waste product, and what I drink.
So I drink very little. When I started working on my novel I obliterated entertainment from my life. It's gone. This allows my imagination to surface without competing with external material. Then, my bladder passively swells.
I get a bodily reaction when it's time to write. Sometimes it's at 4am when I wake up or 5pm or 8pm. Throughout the day I keep track of it and I even hold it in for a bit when it gets really strong. I'll take a half hour walk or meditate 20 minutes to mark the end of a passive train of thought then I get to the page.
I piss hard. On good days it's concentrated liquid gold.
I appreciate your enthusiasm for literature bit long winded my friend, thought was about a revered authors writing routine, not a lecture on how to become a writer. Anyways I got a gem for yens if you're curious. A friend of mine is a friend of an old friend of Cormac's supposedly the one who Lacey Rawlins from All the Pretty Horses is based on, who told my friend that Cormac would smoke weed and write, in his later years he would smoke some lay in bed with a laptop on his chest and write. He also shared with me that Cormac would write and if disliked it, would simply throw it out and start over. The whole page i assume considering that doesn't work with a novel but thats what he said. According to my friend this guy also has rough drafts and other unfinished works Cormac gave him saying sell it when i'm dead. I have every reason to believe my friend who only told me this because he knew i was reading some Cormac's works. I know it's second hand but i believe it. cheers
Our society hides death away, giving it a commercial funeral and a short goodbye.
Caitlin Doughty's book, From Here to Eternity, is a neat exploration of this.
Please make videos about William s. Burroughs. Fan from Egypt.
Like so he can see.
30s and 40s the twilight years of life. 😅 you can tell he’s still a kid.
IMHO a Charles Bukowsky quote says it all “Dont try”. Trying to write “the inmortal poem” It’s a waste of time. Im sure most people here know about him, but to the point, he recommended just writing your best just ‘cause you love it, and keep dojng it till you reach your peak, whatever that is.
This gives me hope. Thank you.
Skool course looks 🔥
“The best way to guarantee that you won’t write a bad book is to take a long time writing” is such a dumb misleading thing to say lol.
Most good books take a long time to write. That’s reality
@@Josh-et4kithere are exceptions though, Mishima was highly prolific.
I think the stuff about how you break through as a writer was a little bit too woo-woo. The spiritual stuff sounds profound to other people who share similar beliefs, but silly to everyone else (whether secular atheist or traditionally religious people).
I bit too scattered. Many interesting point that probably each deserve their own videos.
14:00 LUCK: laboring under correct knowledge
Fire
Actually I disagree, if you don’t set a deadline a book can be endlessly revised and lose its initial energy. Writing a single book over a long period of time frequently leads to bad books, not better.
Revaled?
Thanks!
Why did you decide to write a book of poetry? Isn't it the least read type of book?
Room To Dream!! Any chance you'll cover some David Lynch's biography?