Are Writers Superstitious Creatures?

First off, I better admit to my own superstition (or maybe it's a ritual): I always use my lucky coffee mug whenever I write or edit my work. Am I alone in this? Well, the snoop in me investigated the question.

It turns out Cormac McCarthy used the same portable Olivetti manual typewriter to compose his classic novels. He then auctioned it off for charity. I envy whoever won that bid. There's the famous story how John Cheever liked to write in the basement of his apartment building. Papa Hemingway used a stand up desk. Isabel Allende says she only starts her new books on January 8th.

Somewhere I heard the anecdote how Donald Barthelme listened to the recording of a clacking typewriter to get his own typewriter in gear. Perhaps a macabre Zen thing, Edith Sitwell liked to sit in her open coffin before her writing sessions. An English prof told me that Harry Crews wrote in a sauna.

The poet Friedrich von Schiller had a yen for smelling musty apples while invoking his muse. Hemingway's pal John Dos Passos who lived in Virginia's Northern Neck was a big walker, his daughter told us.

So, if you rely on a favorite superstition and it works for you, then keep it under your hat. In fact, I wouldn't whisper it to another soul lest (I love using that word) they steal your superstition's mojo.

By Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles
"Satisfying."
The Rap Sheet/Kirkus Reviews