“During his most fertile years, from the late 1920s through the early ’40s, Faulkner worked at an astonishing pace, often completing three thousand words a day and occasionally twice that amount. (He once wrote to his mother that he had managed ten thousand words in one day, working between 10: 00 A.M. and midnight— a personal record.) ‘I write when the spirit moves me,’ Faulkner said, ‘and the spirit moves me every day.'”
~ Mason Currey on William Faulkner’s work ethic
William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897 – 1962), was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932).
As a schoolchild, Faulkner had much success early on. He excelled in the first grade, skipped the second, and continued doing well through the third and fourth grades. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades of his schooling, Faulkner became a much more quiet and withdrawn child. He began to play hooky occasionally and became somewhat indifferent to his schoolwork, even though he began to study the history of Mississippi on his own time in the seventh grade. The decline of his performance in school continued and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh, and then final grade, and never graduating from high school. (Source: Wiki)
Image Credit: Popmatters.com. Quote Source: Mason Currey from Daily Rituals: How Artists Work via bakadesuyo.com. Bio: Wiki
“…and the spirit moves me everyday”. To channel that into writing of such brilliance – wow.
Yes, his work is beyond compare.
or “when I write, the spirit moves me.” That’s what I hear him saying, and it’s so true.
Yes. It is. So True.
To me, perhaps the most impressive thing is that he did it without word processing. Old school. Hard work…
But he didn’t have the internet to distract him, either.
Laughing, so true.
And no Google to fill in blanks with research.
I can understand Faulkner wanting to skip school (and me, a retired teacher). He just wanted to write, and you can’t do that when you’re surrounded by so many other people or a teacher that’s talking or telling you to do something other than what you want to be doing – writing.
And he certainly did that in spades.
Ahhh! Would that the Spirit would also move me to write every day! … Or could it be that I’m not responding to the moving of the Spirit??! Thank you for responding David!
Deep (very) question Joann!
I echo the sentiments about skipping school (present teacher). Just to be in the world would be incredible. To sit by a river, with clouds floating overhead, and trees whispering lightly in the breeze. That would be the life.
Oh, that would be the life Ivon. Yes it would. What evocative images you paint.
Thank you David. When I grow up, I want to live like Faulkner.
This is deep. I can’t fathom the drive he has. Wonderful post!
It is. Talent, work ethic, focus, drive. He played at another level.
I used to write 2,000 words 6 days a week. Now I write on average 900 words, 5 days a week, which may not sound as good, but it involves more thinking and less editing. I bet Faulkner had someone else to do his cooking and his housework for him, unlike me!
I bet he did…you just need to get help and you’ll reach 10,000
Unfortunately, I can’t afford to pay for help until I write a bestseller. One of life’s many Catch 22s!
It’s only a matter of time Sarah. Only a matter of time.