on writing - author anecdotes

These are always to fun to read - the small beginnings to great ends.

1. The Hobbit:
J.R.R. TOLKIEN was grading college exam papers, and midway through
the stack he came across a gloriously blank sheet. Tolkien wrote down the
first thing that randomly popped into his mind: “In a hole in the ground there
lived a hobbit.” He had no idea what a hobbit was or why it lived
underground, and so he set out to solve the mystery.

2. Treasure Island:
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON painted a map to pass the time during a
dreary vacation in the Scottish Highlands. When he stepped back to admire his
handiwork, a cast of imaginary pirates appeared. Stevenson recalled, “They
passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a
flat projection.” He promptly traded his paintbrush for a quill and began to write.

3. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
L. FRANK BAUM was telling his sons a story when he abruptly stopped.
He’d been swept away to a land unlike any his imagination had ever conjured.
Baum ushered the young audience into another room and, page by page, began
to document Dorothy’s journey along the yellow brick road.

By Neily

the well written - gabriel garcia marquez

To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her
for fear of destroying the spell.

- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

By Felicia Olin