John Updike died yesterday at age 76, having authored 61 books. Sixty-one books!
How did he do it? The New York Times reported that Updike churned out three pages a day, thus proving the writer’s workshop promise that three pages a day can produce roughly a book a year. Or in Updike’s case, serious real estate on the library shelf.
From the Times article: “I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to,” he told The Paris Review in 1967. “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”
What Updike teaches us is this: Writers write. Artists make art. Musicians make music. Inventors invent stuff. Creators create.
And this: whatever your personal goal—learning Mandarin, mastering the circle of fifths, inventing the holographic Post-It—all it takes is three little inklings a day to make some serious traction.
—Britta