Whoever expected writers to be other than difficult people?

As someone who has spent nearly 60 years as a professional writer, I am inevitably set in my ways, though capable of changing them radically in a crisis. But I recognise that my ways are not typical, that there is no such thing as a typical writer.

From magazine issue: 01 September 2007

issue 01 September 2007

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Paul Johnson

Whoever expected writers to be other than difficult people?
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As someone who has spent nearly 60 years as a professional writer, I am inevitably set in my ways, though capable of changing them radically in a crisis. But I recognise that my ways are not typical, that there is no such thing as a typical writer. Starting early is for me axiomatic (it is 6.45 a.m. as I write these words). It was for Trollope too, who paid his groom an extra sum annually for bringing him a scalding cup of coffee as dawn was breaking. And I, like Trollope, start writing immediately. By contrast, J.B. Priestley told me that he needed anything up to an hour fiddling with the objects on his desk before actually beginning the process of putting words on to paper, though once begun he wrote steadily.