Writers' Routines: LATE BLOOMERS: Raymond Chandler

Jan 16, 2012
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LATE BLOOMERS: Raymond Chandler

At 20, Chandler became a reporter. He was an unsuccessful journalist, published reviews and continued writing romantic poetry. Accounting for that time he said, “Of course in those days as now there were clever young men who made a decent living as freelancers for the numerous literary weeklies, but I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man.”

He strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. By 1931, at age 43, he had become a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but a year later, his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees and threatened suicides contributed to his being fired. Chandler turned to writing to make a living, teaching himself to write pulp fiction. He published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, The Big Sleep, at 51. -wikipedia

“The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at the least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. But he is not to do any other thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines. Two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write. b: you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.” -Raymond Chandler

(Source: timothyhallinan.com)