Odd Type Writers: From Joyce and Dickens to Wharton and Welty, the Obsessive Habits and Quirky Techniques of Great Authors

Every great writer has a unique way of setting a story to paper. And, it turns out, many of these writers used methods that were just as inventive as the works they produced. Odd Type Writers explores the quirky writing habits of renowned authors, including Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Alexandre Dumas, among many others.

* To meet his deadline for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo placed himself under strict house arrest, locking up all of his clothes and wearing nothing but a large gray shawl until he finished the book.

* Virginia Woolf used purple ink for love letters, diary entries, and to pen her acclaimed novel Mrs. Dalloway. Also, in her twenties, she preferred to write while standing up.

* Friedrich Schiller kept a drawer full of rotten apples in his study. According to his wife, he couldn't work without that pungent odor wafting into his nose.

* Eudora Welty evaluated her work with scissors handy. If anything needed to be moved, she cut it right out of the page. Then she'd use pins to put the section in its new place.

In Odd Type Writers, you'll find out why James Joyce wrote in crayon, what Edgar Allan Poe's cat was doing on his shoulder, why Vladimir Nabokov had to keep his feet wet, and the other peculiar tools and eccentric methods used to compose some of the greatest works of all time.

Celia Blue Johnson is the author of several books, including Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway: Stories of the Inspiration Behind Great Works of Literature. She also serves as the creative director of Slice Literary, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization. Find out more at celiablue.com.