I enjoyed this article from WritingSpirit Blog about Louisa May Alcott’s writing methods. WritingSpirit has found articles from The Writer Magazine dated back to the 1890s. One gem is an article entitled “Methods of Authors: Favorite Habits of Work” which discusses Louisa May Alcott’s own habits (Alcott died several years prior to the writing of the article). One interesting tidbit is that she would think up whole chapters word for word at night and wait until the daylight to write everything down. WritingSpirit is most impressed by the lack of typewriter or computer, but I’m not as impressed given that writers have been doing without those for centuries…(and some even without those in this century).
WritingSpirit has posted the actual article to her blog so go check it out! I like how the author of the article likes to note whether the writers like to write by artificial light or by sunlight, whether they use “stimulants” or not, and whether they like to use a “skeleton” or an outline.
As an afterthought–I titled this post “a blog written by sunlight…” but since my laptop itself has artificial light, I guess that isn’t accurate :)