INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.
The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957
A great writer and commentator. In Cold Blood was very tragic & sad, i.e., the Clutter Family!
Posted by: Basil McCormick | July 12, 2009 at 12:32 PM
Well, to think I have something in common with a great writer. That's me - sipping coffee and smoking. Don't tell my healthy lifestyle followers though. I make up for it with healthy eating and excerise.
Posted by: Carole | January 17, 2009 at 03:15 PM