Since Conan Doyle seldom took more than a week to complete a Sherlock Holmes story, his fee was generous in the extreme. His technique was to map out the problem and its solution, draw up a rough outline and sketch in the characters before sitting down to write the finished story. He worked at a flat-topped desk in a corner of his study which overlooked the garden. The walls were hung with his father's watercolours and mementoes of his trip to the Arctic were all around- whaling harpoons, a stuffed Icelandic falcon and the skull of a polar bear. It was his habit to write from breakfast until lunch every morning, then from five to about eight o'clock in the evening, usually averaging 3,000 words a day- a prodigious output any writer would envy. Many of his ideas were dreamed up in the afternoons, walking or cycling with Touie, or playing tennis or cricket. Once he had finished a story he had no further interest in it. As he would explain in a letter to G.K. Chesterton, his work might be improved by editing, but not by him. He had given all in his first effort and any further tinkering would be 'gratuitous and a waste of time.
-The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography, Russell Miller pp.145-146
Quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton
Saturday, November 24, 2018
A Chesterton mention I found in a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, which mentions Doyle writing to Chesterton:
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