Match Game

Let's play a game. Match the writer with their unusual quirk:

The Writers

1. Charles Dickens

2. Dan Brown

3. Wallace Stevens

4. Sir Walter Scott

5. George Bernard Shaw

6. PBW

7. Dr. Maya Angelou

8. Ernest Hemingway

9. T.S. Eilot

10. John Steinbeck

The Quirks

A. Wore green-tinted face powder and lipstick while writing.

B. Always wrote standing up due to pain from an old leg injury.

C. Wrote in a shed mechanized to slowly revolve.

D. Wrote on horseback.

E. Would take a Bible, a copy of Roget's Thesaurus, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry to a small hotel room to write.

F. Stopped every hour while writing to do sit-ups, push-ups and stretches.

G. Kept a comb nearby and used it hundreds of times per day while writing.

H. Could not write with loose hair; always wore it tightly bound, braided or pinned up while writing.

I. Wrote while walking.

J. Always kept twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on the desk.

Post your best guesses (no Googling!) and tell us if you have an unusual writing quirk, too. The correct answers will be provided in comments at the end of the day.

Match Game

Let's play a game. You know the old saying that you are what you eat? Try to match the writer with their snack of choice:

The Snacks:

1. Coconut Chips

2. Milk

3. Unpeeled carrots

4. Ham and cheese sandwich

5. Beans and hominy

6. Vinegar

7. Oysters

8. Coffee with raw eggs

9. Heavy cream

10. Homemade Bread

The Writers:

A. Emily Dickinson

B. Walt Whitman

C. PBW

D. Franz Kafka

E. John Steinbeck

F. Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)

G. Michael Crichton

H. Agatha Christie

I. Lord Byron

J. Victor Hugo

No Googling! List your guesses in comments, where I'll post up the correct answers at the end of the day.

Match Game Ten

For this Monday's ten things list let's play a game. See if you can match the writer to the fact:

The Facts:

1. Wrote while lying in bed in a white coat. Also composed most of one novel while writing with crayon pieces on cardboard.

2. Used a watch to obsessively time creative sessions to make a quota of writing 250 words every 15 minutes.

3. Let a pile of apples rot in a desk drawer and would open the drawer and breathe in the stench as "inspiration" to work.

4. Ate vanilla wafers as fuel for the muse.

5. Preferred to write letters in purple ink.

6. Wrote in a car while out running errands (someone else was driving, thankfully.)

7. Wrote two novels by typing them on rolls of accounting machine paper and cutting off the pages from the typewriter as they were completed.

8. Wrote nearly all novel drafts on 3 X 5 index cards, which were clipped together and stored in boxes.

9. Wrote while leaning over a refrigerator (yes, that tall).

10. Preferred to write in the bath while eating apples.

The Writers:

A. Gertrude Stein

B. James Joyce

C. Agatha Christie

D. PBW

E. Anthony Trollope

F. Friedrich Schiller

G. Thomas Clayton Wolfe

H. Flannery O'Connor

I. Vladimir Nabokov

J. Virginia Woolf

(The correct answers will be posted in comments at the end of the day.)

Match Game Ten

For this Monday's ten things list let's play a game. See if you can match the writer to the fact:

The Facts:

1. Wrote with a goose quill pen and blue ink on blue-gray slips of paper measuring 8-3/4" by 7-1/4".

2. Never revised. If something didn't work this writer trashed the entire manuscript and started over again at the beginning.

3. Burned a first/unpublished novel after a friend said he didn't like it.

4. Died at forty but wrote fifty novels.

5. Wrote a 60K book and designed its cover art for the publisher in seventeen days.

6. Invented a glass harmonica.

7. After going blind, composed what is considered the greatest epic in the English language.

8. Once wrote in a letter that the world will end in the year 2060.

9. Had only 500 copies of the first edition of their debut novel printed because the publisher was afraid it wouldn't sell.

10. After graduating Harvard this writer didn't think the diploma fee of $5.00 was worth it, and so left without the diploma.

The Writers:

A. Jack London

B. J.K. Rowling

C. Evelyn Waugh

D. Benjamin Franklin

E. John Milton

F. Sir Isaac Newton

G. Henry David Thoreau

H. PBW

I. D.H. Lawrence

J. Charles Dickens

(The correct answers will be posted in comments at the end of the day.)