Thieves By Tuesday*

There is no easy way to perfect a varying and subjective skill such as writing. Some people find it hard to write a simple letter while others make novels in a span of a month. Where is the justice in this world?

Complaints were all that I could make once my weekly, if not daily, batch of writer's block arrives, and this doesn't help me improve or lighten the burden of finishing a writing duty. How about the legends of this world? How did they hone their skills and can we do it too?

1. Stephen King (of Green Mile fame). In his book On Writing, King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays. That’s a lot of writing each day, and it has led to some incredible results: King is one of the most prolific writers of our time.

2. Ernest Hemingway (of The Old Man and the Sea fame). By contrast with King, “Papa” Hemingway wrote 500 words a day. That’s not bad, though. Hemingway, like me, woke early to write to avoid the heat and to write in peace and quiet. Interestingly, though Hemingway is famous for his alcoholism, he said he never wrote while drunk.

3. Vladimir Nabokov (of Lolita fame). The author of such great novels as Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada did his writing standing up, and all on index cards. This allowed him to write scenes non-sequentially, as he could re-arrange the cards as he wished. His novel Ada took up more than 2,000 cards.

4. Truman Capote (of Breakfast at Tiffany's fame). The author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” claimed to be a “completely horizontal author.” He said he had to write lying down, in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee. The coffee would switch to tea, then sherry, then martinis, as the day wore on. He wrote his first and second drafts in longhand, in pencil. And even his third draft, done on a typewriter, would be done in bed — with the typewriter balanced on his knees.

5. Philip Roth (of American Pastoral fame). One of the greatest living American writers, Roth works standing up, pacing around as he thinks. He claimed to walk half a mile for every page he writes. He separates his work life from personal life, and doesn’t write where he lives — he has a studio built away from his house. He works at a lectern that doesn’t face the view of his studio window, to avoid distraction.

6. James Joyce(of Ulysses fame). In the pantheon of great writers of the last century, Joyce looms large. And while more prolific writers set themselves a word or page limit, Joyce prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend asking Joyce in the street if he’d had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily. How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him.

7. Joyce Carol Oates (of The Gravediggers Daughter fame). This extremely prolific writer (see her bibliography on her Wikipedia page!) has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award. She writes in longhand, and while she doesn’t have a formal schedule, she says she prefers to write in the morning, before breakfast. She’s a creative writing professor, and on the days she teaches, she says she writes for an hour or 45 minutes before leaving for her first class. On other days, when the writing is going well, she can work for hours without a break — and has breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon!

On a March day in Oregon, the sun's as bright as a California morning. That's great news for the locals, but it sucks if you're a vampire. For two weeks, Twilight, the $37 million film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novel, has been shooting outside Portland — a location chosen, in part, because the skies are often overcast. Vampires, in Meyer's universe, can go out during the day but have to stay out of direct sunlight. Hence, today's problem. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) has had to scrap an exterior shoot, and, because tomorrow's weather looks annoyingly cheery too, she's been forced to rush into an intense romantic scene between her two young stars. ''We were building a bedroom in 24 hours,'' Hardwicke says later. ''We were just sweating it.''

Fans have been sweating it too. Not since Harry Potter has a book-to-film journey inspired so much enthusiasm — or so much anxiety. The movie will follow the novel closely: Pretty but awkward 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), a heartbreakingly beautiful vampire. Edward also falls for Bella, but his desire for her barely controls his instinct to devour her. It's this combination of passion and danger, of course, that surrounds this teen romance with a halo of epic, doomed love. The girls who have gone crazy for the book have been vivisecting the film's development online. Two girls from the Make a Wish Foundation even requested roles as extras. ''You can't make this up,'' Hardwicke says. With a fan base like that, all of Hollywood should have been jousting for the film rights. In fact, the movie almost didn't happen.

"Anna: Trust you're having a merry Fourth. Please don't let what I'm about to say put too much of a damper on it. Listen, you've been impeccable these past 20 years. You're British, everyone fears you, there was that movie, etc. etc. And let's face it: in your absence, everyone who works here will probably start eating again and that's bad for health insurance premiums. But when in the course of human events you have to cut off the clothing allowance, well…you give them the good news first! I'm actually giving your job to Priya Tanna, the editor of Vogue India. Have you ever looked at Vogue India? They know English there, and if they know English I might be able to read their magazines, not that stylish prose was the first thing on my mind when I walked into the newsstand and found myself face to face with the most gorgeous specimen of femininity I have ever seen. It not being some overspackled underfreckled overexposed celebublonde, it took me awhile to process that it was Vogue I was looking at."