Heller wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads and reworked passages carefully, often numerous times—by hand and then on a typewriter—before handing them off to a typist for a final copy. “I am a chronic fiddler,” he said. While working, he liked to listen to classical music, particularly Bach. And if he skipped a day, he didn’t beat himself up. “It’s an everyday thing, but I’m never guilt-ridden if I don’t work,” he said. “I don’t have a compulsion to write, and I never have. I have a wish, an ambition to write, but it’s not one that justifies the word ‘drive.’ ” Neither was he insecure about
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