GoodReads.com Paulo Coelho interview

This is one of the funniest things I've read from a very prolific author, Paulo Coelho. He wrote the international bestseller The Alchemist. his newest book is The Witch of Portobello.


Excerpted from an email newsletter received from GoodReads.com 2/25/08:

GoodReads: You have stated that each of your books was written over a period of only two to four weeks. Describe a typical day spent writing.

PC: When I finally feel I’m ready to embark on a new book, I always go through the following cycle that takes me from two weeks to a month. Before going to bed I have everything planned: I will wake up early and dedicate myself solely to the novel I’m writing. The only thing is, when I wake up I decide to browse through the net, then it’s time for my walk. When I come back I quickly check my mails and before I know it it’s already 2:30 p.m. and time to have lunch. After which I always take a sacrosanct nap. When I wake up at 5 p.m. I come back to my computer, check another set of emails, visit my blogs, read the news. Then it is already time for dinner—and at this point I’m feeling extremely guilty for not fulfilling my goal of the day. After dinner, I finally sit at my desk and decide to write. The first line takes a bit, but quickly I’m submerged in the tale and ideas take me to places that I never thought I would tread. My wife calls me to go to bed but I can’t, I need to finish the line, then the paragraph, then the page...It goes on like this until 2–3 a.m. When I finally decide to go to bed, I still have many ideas in my mind—that I carefully note down on a piece of paper. I know, though, that I’ll never use this—I’m simply emptying my mind. When I finally rest my head on my pillow I make the same oath—that the next day I’ll wake up early and that I’ll write the whole day long. But this is useless: The next day I wake up late and this cycle starts all over again.