Critics and fellow writers—particularly the ones who couldn’t meet deadlines—were appalled at his system. How could an artist work by the clock? How could inspiration be precisely scheduled and monitored? But Trollope had anticipated their criticisms in his autobiography. “I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius,” he wrote. “I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop
...more
