Elmore Leonard

AMIS: What is your routine and how do you go about it?

LEONARD: I write every day when I'm writing, some Saturdays and Sundays, a few hours each day. Because I want to stay with it. If a day goes by and you haven't done anything, or a couple of days, it's difficult to get back into the rhythm of it. I usually start working around 9:30 and I work until 6. I'm lucky to get what I consider four clean pages. They're clean until the next day, the next morning. The time flies by. I can't believe it. When I look at the clock and it's 3 o'clock and I think, "Good, I've got three more hours." And then I think, "I must have the best job in the world." I don't look at this as work. I don't look at it as any kind of test, any kind of proof of what I can do. I have a good time.

AMIS: And it just seems to flow? There are no days when whole hours are spent gazing out of the window, picking your nose, making coffee?

LEONARD: Oh yeah, there are whole hours' work to make one short paragraph work.

Martin Amis Interviews Elmore Leonard