Ignore the World: A Day in the Life of Novelist Patricia Highsmith
TESS IN THE CITY
June 21, 2020
“Obsessions are the only things that matter.”
― Patricia Highsmith
Dubbed “the Poet of Apprehension” by Novelist Graham Greene, Patricia Highsmith is probably best known for Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley (for which she won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière). She was born as Mary Patricia Plangman but took her stepfather’s last name when her mother remarried. She was born in Fort Worth, Texas but grew up in New York (Manhattan and Astoria, Queens). In 1952, Highsmith published “the first lesbian novel with a happy ending” — The Price of Salt under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. In 1990, Highsmith republished the book as Carol under her own name. The New Yorker notes that The Price of Salt, or Carol, is the only Highsmith novel where “no violent crime occurs.” Highsmith spent much of her life as a recluse despite her many lovers. She died at 74 in Switzerland and left three million dollars of her estate to the Yaddo artist community in upstate New York.
In Mason Currey’s first Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, he describes Patricia Highsmith’s prolific writing routine:
“Highsmith wrote daily, usually for three or four hours in the morning, completing two thousand words on a good day.”
A Day in the Life of Patricia Highsmith:
“My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith’s reclusiveness seemed befitting for quarantine. And the day started off quite on track. I woke a little before 6AM, showered, dressed, journaled three pages, made a cup of green Matcha tea, ate a spoonful of Manuka Honey, and by 9AM, I was ready to start on my three hours of morning writing with the hope of getting to at least 2,000 words like Highsmith. Because I had a word count goal, I knew that the better genre to write in was probably fiction, so I turned to a short story I started a few weeks ago, and for two hours straight I wrote 2,586 words.
The third hour into the Patricia Highsmith writing day got a little more challenging. Throughout my life, I’ve had some issues with circulation (runs in my family), but quarantine has taken that to a whole other level. The result has been major cramping, sometimes in my whole body, which is what started happening as I worked on this piece. I had to stand up to write and shake out my leg and wrist, walking out every couple sentences to return to the page. My veins started swelling in my arms and hands, and the pain got so much, I had to take a break about 11:30AM.
I walked around the room, finishing Martha Collins’s book Admit One which I highly recommend. I also stretched with a few yoga poses to ease the pain. Took a Tylenol and ordered the mushroom extracts one of my best friends has repeatedly been encouraging me to get. You win, Catherine. I wrote from bed with a pillow propped under my knees which is actually closer to how Highsmith would jumpstart her writing. According to Currey:
“[Highsmith’s] favorite technique to ease herself into the right frame of mind for work was to sit on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut and an accompanying saucer of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible.”
I wouldn’t say my day writing by Patricia Highsmith’s schedule was particularly pleasurable, but the writing part was fun until my body started rebelling. For upcoming A Day in the Life of… I think it would be interesting to do some writers I’ve read extensively. Of the three writers I’ve shadowed, I haven’t read their work extensively, so I wonder how that might change the experience of writing by their routines with a greater intimacy of their work.
What’s similar about the three writers I’ve thus far “followed” is how prolific they were. They got to the page everyday. Because of my bout of pain this weekend, I’m curious about writers who lived with chronic pain, what they did to get to the page, how steady was their routine. I haven’t yet selected next week’s writer, but stay tuned, I will! And if anyone has a writing schedule, they adhere to, let me know in the comments below! And/or if you recommend anyone else whose schedules I should shadow in the upcoming weeks. I’ll leave you with editing advice from Patricia Highsmith’s book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction: “Be as ruthless as if you were throwing excess baggage, even fuel, out of an overloaded airplane.”
There you have it!
Love and Light,
Tess! In the City
“A Day in the Life of…” [artist/writer] is me trying to adhere to the schedule, routine, modes of life of past writers. It’s also a fun way to feature some of the most influential artists of past and present. Many of the routines/schedules I’ve learned from Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and his corrective sequel Daily Rituals: Women at Work, both of which I highly recommend as well as the interview I conducted with Mason Currey for Publisher’s Weekly which can be found here.
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