Thursday 13 May 2010

P.G. Wodehouse's Pinboard


A fellow once told me that P.G. Wodehouse had a huge, green pinboard in his study. When he had finished writing a page he would remove it from the typewriter, read it over and pin it to the pinboard. If he thought it was a Good Page he would pin it near the top and if he thought it was a Bad Page he would pin it near the bottom.

When he had finished the novel he would take the lowest page from the pinboard, rewrite it and pin it back up. He would keep doing this until all the pages were bunched near the top like coconuts on a palm tree. Then he would take them all down, put them in order, and post them to his publisher.

This seems like a rather good idea.


2 comments:

  1. I'll try anything. Thanks for the tip.

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  2. The Antipodean, in a rare burst of brevity,1 July 2010 at 15:04

    Not quite the same, but Rands has a pic towards the end of this: www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/06/28/how_to_write_a_book.html which is the modern equivalent of the mental picture I took away from this post.

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