Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck: How to Rule an Audience as a Writer

Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck, after spending over twenty years of his life as a pimp, became a famous and bestselling writer in the African-American community. Subsequently, his novels made him the most notorious (former) pimp in America. His most famous book, Pimp: The Story of My Life, is an autobiographical novel that was published in 1967 by the notorious Holloway House and sold millions of copies. Ironically yet unsurprisingly, Beck saw little of the money.

Like Nabokov, Beck visualized his characters in his head, he wrote for long hours (e.g., sometimes up to 18 hours per day), and, like Proust, Beck was a recluse. 

Justin Gifford's Street Poison, The Biography of Iceberg Slim and Ian Whitaker's Iceberg Slim The Lost Interviews sheds some very interesting light on Beck's writing habits and his views on writers and writing. 

For example, Beck opined that being a writer is better than being a physician or an attorney:

Writing books is better than pimping. In fact, it's better than being a doctor or a lawyer. I don't have to go to court, I don't have to go to the hospital to perform an operation. I have no equipment...I don't even need paper; I'll write on the walls. All of my equipment [tapping his head] is in my noggin. And another thing; writing has been a wonderful boon for me, psychologically. The vacuum of ego that existed when I could no longer pimp has been filled most adequately.

And Beck posited that to command an audience, a writer must be bare and confess:

[...] I've been able to do what any artist must do if he's to rule the greatest possible audience - and that is to bare his emotional structure to the bone [...] That is, I have overridden my inhibitions so I can confess. It springs from the soul, brother. So many people are dying and crying out to confess. But they lack the courage. 

Writers Should Write - Not Talk?

Previously, we posted that Vladimir Nabokov shared in the foreword to Strong Opinions: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child." Thus, Nabokov considered himself a good writer but a poor speaker. So much so, that his lectures and interviews were pre-written. Nabokov related:

"Throughout my academic ascent in America from lean lecturer to Full Professor, I have never delivered to my audience one scrap of information not prepared in typescript beforehand and not held under my eyes on the bright-lit lectern."

"The interviewer's questions have to be sent to me in writing, answered by me in writing, and reproduced verbatim. Such are the three absolute conditions."

And Becca Rothfeld posted on Gawker that "WRITERS SHOULDN'T TALK: Stop encouraging them", because writers are "isolated" "amenders" whom delete "[...] unsatisfactory variants of a single sentence for upwards of an hour". 

For one thing, authors are often poor orators, inept at the most basic mechanics of verbalization. They hum and halt and hesitate, interrupting themselves, appending caveats to their caveats, thrumming a chorus of tentative “ums.” They are drafters and amenders, if not by vocation than by profession, and in conversation, their strongest pronouncements tend to be timid, as if they were editing in real time.

Who in their right mind would want to talk, much less listen, to a person who has contrived to spend as much of her life as possible crouched over her computer in isolation, deleting unsatisfactory variants of a single sentence for upwards of an hour?

Therefore, how can writers be expected to speak well when they're used to carefully crafting their sentences? Although, there are some exceptions (e.g., Rothfeld posted a link to an exceptional conversation that David Foster Wallace had with Charli Rose), in the end, it may be best to follow Rothfeld's advice:

Most writers are not talkers for a reason. Stop encouraging them to humiliate themselves in conversation so that they can return to the impossibly difficult business of perfecting themselves in print.

Does Danielle Steel Really Write for 20 to 22 Hours Per Day?!

Lena Dunham is writing Verified Strangers, a serial romance novel, that's being posted week-daily on Vogue’s website. Consequently, Dunham posted on Twitter that, for inspiration, she revisited a Danielle Steel Glamour profile (MAY 9, 2019). (In case you're wondering, Verified Strangers is more Cecily von Ziegesar than Vladimir Nabokov.)

Here are some relevant excerpts from Steel's Glamour profile:

The author has written 179 books [...] To pull it off, she works 20 to 22 hours a day. (A couple times a month, when she feels the crunch, she spends a full 24 hours at her desk.)

Steel is a creature of habit. She gets to her office—by 8:30 A.M., where she can often be found in her cashmere nightgown. In the morning she'll have one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee (she gave up full-throated caffeine 25 years ago). After lunch and as the day wears on, she'll nibble on miniature bittersweet chocolate bars. "Dead or alive, rain or shine, I get to my desk and I do my work. Sometimes I'll finish a book in the morning, and by the end of the day, I've started another project," Steel says.

"I don't get to bed until I'm so tired I could sleep on the floor. If I have four hours, it's really a good night for me," Steel says.

For all her exhortations, Steels does sometimes fear that she's overemphasized work, wishing she'd "had a little more fun." Now every summer she takes a full week off in the South of France to be with her family. They’ll hang out on the beach; she catches up on her reading. (Steel can't read other books while working on her own, which means she can basically never read other books.) On the rare nights that she finishes work earlier than expected, she'll fit in about an hour or so of television, often Netflix [...]

I'm not saying that I don't believe that Steel writes for 20 to 22 hours per day, but I find that to be extremely hard to believe. 

The Paris Review related that Nabokov worked on his translation of Pushkin's Onegin for approximately 17 hours per day - for two months, but Nabokov shared that he was on the verge of a [nervous] breakdown: “I was … on the verge of a breakdown and not fit for company. For two months in Cambridge I did nothing (from 9 A.M. to 2 A.M.) but work on my commentaries to EO.” 

During the summer of 2010, after teaching a summer school course in Manhattan, I worked on my first novel for about ten hours per day. I did not almost have a nervous breakdown but, despite sleeping between 4 to 5 hours per night, I just couldn't squeeze any more writing time out of the day. 

I will say that Steel's eating habits (e.g., "one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee") are consistent with her alleged work ethic but, per Stephen King and most writers, the fact that Steel doesn't read much is inconsistent with being a writer. 

I wouldn't be surprised if Steel works in a similar fashion to James Patterson who per a Vanity Fair profile (DECEMBER 10, 2014), which refers to Patterson as the "The Henry Ford of Books", Patterson has "an army of co-writers". 

Patterson writes outlines that he sends to co-authors. Upon receiving the manuscript, Patterson revises the MS before sending it to an editor. Consequently, Patterson is: "The planet’s best-selling author since 2001, James Patterson has more than 300 million copies of his books in print, [helped by] an army of co-writers [...]"

Does Good Writing Equal Poor Speaking?

Caroline Wright's speaking writing

Vladimir Nabokov shared in the foreword to Strong Opinions: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child." 

Thus, Nabokov considered himself a good writer but a poor speaker. So much so, that his lectures and interviews were pre-written. Nabokov shared:

"Throughout my academic ascent in America from lean lecturer to Full Professor, I have never delivered to my audience one scrap of information not prepared in typescript beforehand and not held under my eyes on the bright-lit lectern."

"The interviewer's questions have to be sent to me in writing, answered by me in writing, and reproduced verbatim. Such are the three absolute conditions."

We suspect that Nabokov is not an anomaly in this regard. What about you? As your writing improved, did you seen a decline in your speaking ability? 

Does Fiction Reveal Writers?

An #autobiography can distort…but #fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally.
V.S. NAIPAUL pic.twitter.com/vWdCTxGWhO

— Jon Winokur (@AdviceToWriters) August 23, 2019

Do you agree with Naipaul? We say that "never" and "totally" are hyperbolic, but we generally agree with Naipaul. And Naipaul's quote is interesting in light of Henry Miller's and Vladimir Nabokov's oeuvres. 

Best Books About Writers

This excerpt from Katy Waldman's New Yorker review of Andrew Martin's Early Work confirmed one of my concerns about white people who listen to hardcore rap:

"Yeah, I'm pretty into monotonous drug rap right now," she said. "I mean, like everybody. I guess it's the usual racist thing, where white people like it because it takes their worst suspicions about minorities and confirms them in lurid and entertaining ways?"

However, while reading the novel, I found the references to writing, novelists, poets, books, and publishing intriguing, which reminded me that the best books and films about writers/artists are the ones that depicts the writers writing. (Interestingly, Early Work's narrator opined that Balthus' perverted paintings of girls and cats are "wonderful".)

Unlike Olivier Assayas' Something in the Air (2012) and Personal Shopper (2016), I was disappointed with Non-Fiction (2018) [French: Doubles vies] because, although the dialogue about writing and publishing was extremely interesting, the writer wasn't shown honing his craft - not one time.

For the record, our top three books and films about writers/artists are:

Books
The Tenants Bernard Malamud
Transparent Things Vladimir Nabokov
Look at the Harlequins Vladimir Nabokov

Films
The Tenants (2005)
Something in the Air (2012) 
Personal Shopper (2016)

J.D. Salinger: Writers vs. Musicians

I recently wrote a post on Nabokov’s views on music and here’s a look at J.D. Salinger’s views on musicians.

Joyce Maynard shared in At Home in the World: A Memoir the following conversation she had with Salinger. (Salinger and Maynard had a 10-month age-gap affair that began when Maynard was 19 and a freshman at Yale.)

Joyce said, “I wish, instead of writing, that I could play an instrument.”

Salinger responded, “Don’t ever suppose it’s some kind of lesser art form […] because nobody’s lined up outside some […] club full of people in turtlenecks waiting to hear you transport them into some other orbit of pure ecstasy.”

Maynard said, referring to a Jazz performance, “They were inventing everything. Right on the spot.”

But Salinger explained that what Joyce assumed was improvisation were “virtuoso effects” from the (jazz) musicians “repertoire”.

Maynard opined that being a musician “looked like so much more fun than” writing to which Salinger exploded:

“Fun! Not much fun in writing […] No notes on a page for us to fall back on. No amazing orgasmic rhythms to make the audience melt. Not one goddamn thing to do with the body, except to try whenever possible to ignore one’s own cursed immobility. God, the unnaturalness of writing. And unlike performing music, it never gets any easier, no matter how much you do it. Every damned time we sit down to work, it’s that same blank page again. A person could have a better time at a Doug McLure retrospective."

Nabokov & Kafka on Music: It's Primitive, Lulling, Dulling, Stupefying, Numbing, & Animallike

Boyd related in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years that after a lecture at Spelman College, an African-American women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, Nabokov was invited to the chapel but, "he protested", because he "hated music and singing." 

In a 1964 Playboy interview, Nabokov shared: "I have no ear for music [...] I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians [...] But I have found a queer substitute for music in chess—more exactly, in the composing of chess problems."

And in a lecture on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", Nabokov opined that music is primitive and animalistic compared to literature and painting, that music has a "[...] lulling, dulling influence [...]" and that Kafka shared his view that music was "stupefying, numbing, animallike":

Without wishing to antagonize lovers of music, I do wish to point out that taken in a general sense music, as perceived by its consumers, belongs to a more primitive, more animal form in the scale of arts than literature or painting. 

I am taking music as a whole, not in terms of individual creation, imagination, and composition, all of which of course rival the art of literature and painting, but in terms of the impact music has on the average listener. 

A great composer, a great writer, a great painter are brothers. But I think that the impact music in a generalized and primitive form has on the listener is of a more lowly quality than the impact of an average book or an average picture. What I especially have in mind is the soothing, lulling, dulling influence of music on some people such as of the radio or records.

In Kafka's tale it is merely a girl pitifully scraping on a fiddle and this corresponds in the piece to the canned music or plugged-in music of today. 

What Kafka felt about music in general is what I have just described: its stupefying, numbing, animallike quality. 

This attitude must be kept in mind in interpreting an important sentence that has been misunderstood by some translators. Literally, it reads “Was Gregor an animal to be so affected by music?” That is, in his human form he had cared little for it but in this scene, in his beetlehood, he succumbs: “He felt as if the way were opening before him to the unknown nourishment he craved.” 

Learn How to Play Chess Like a Writer

A number of writers like Nabokov, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe wrote about and played chess. Unlike Tolstoy, you may not have learned to play chess as a child but I've got a simple way for you to learn, because it can be a daunting task. 

Firstly, I recommend that you learn the names of the chess pieces and how they move:

King: 

Moves one box in any direction

Queen: 

Moves in any direction as far as possible

Rook: 

Moves forward\backwards and side-to-side as far as possible (i.e., in straight lines).

Bishop: 

Moves diagonally as far as possible

Knight: 

Moves in a L shape and is the only piece that can jump

Pawn: 

Moves forward one box but initially can move two but captures diagonally

The only piece that can block

If it reaches the other side of the board, it gets promoted to a piece of your choosing

Secondly and lastly, I recommend that you play. It's that simple. Once you start playing, you'll organically understand how to capture your opponents king (i.e., "Checkmate."). And the game is so kind that you're warned that your king is in grave danger (i.e., "Check."). If you can't find a patient human to play with you, I recommend an app set on the lowest level of difficulty. 

#WhatsInYour[WRITER'S]Bag: A Russian Novelist's knapsack

Transparent Things (1972) p.18

A popular hashtag on Instagram is #whatsinyourbag. For some reason, it can be fascinating to view the contents of a stranger's bags. And writers may find it very interesting to read about the contents of a Russian novelist's knapsack:

• rough drafts of letters
• an unfinished short story in a Russian copybook
• parts of a philosophical essay in a blue cahier purchased in Geneva
• loose sheets of a rudimentary novel temporarily titled Faust in Moscow
• portable ink

Person is the protagonist in Nabokov's Transparent Things. A quean took Person to a room in a "hideous old roominghouse" where the Russian novelist "[...] sojourned on his way to Italy."

So, what's in your (writer's) bag?

Speed Reading Made Easy

I've been reading eight books - five in English, two (slowly) in Arabic and one (very slowly) in French. The English titles are:

Abbott's The End of Everything
Nabokov's Mary
Wilson's The Twenties
Dawidoff's The Fly Swatter
Mathews' Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life

To save time, I've reverted back to speed reading. I'm not sure why I stopped. I believe that I decided to read slowly as a passive-aggressive protest against the hustle and bustle of New York City. 

I learned to speed read from Ferriss' blog post "Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes". It's a long read and there is more than one way to do it, but the short version is that to read quickly while retaining comprehension, one should read with a pen\pen or his finger and stop about two words in from the left and right margins. 

Reading with a pen forces one to read quicker and your peripheral vision will read the words that are "skipped" near the margins. 

Trust me. It works. 

LOL: Laughing Out Loud While Reading

To assist with an ongoing project, I recently re-read Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark and I'm almost done re-reading Look at the Harlequins! and I don't recall the novels being as funny the first time that I read them. There were a lot moments in the books that made me smile, which I marked in the margins with a lonely LOL, but there are other moments where the acronym gets an accompanying exclamation point that indicates that I literally laughed out loud - on the subway.

Here's an example of a LOL where Albinus and Margot are frolicking at the beach:

He splashed in after her. She turned toward him, laughing, spitting, wiping the wet hair from her eyes. He attempted to duck her, then caught her by the ankle and she kicked and screamed. An Englishwoman who was lolling in a deck-chair beneath a mauve sunshade reading Punch turned to her husband, a red-faced, white-hatted man squatting on the sand, and said:

“Look at that German romping about with his daughter. Now, don’t be so lazy, William. Take the children out for a good swim.” p114

But here are two examples of LOL! moments:

In this scene, Albinus suspects that Paul knows about the affair.

She was cuddled in a corner of the sofa, relating slowly and minutely the plot of a play which she had seen. Her pale eyes with the faint freckles under them were as candid as her mother’s had been, and her unpowdered nose shone pathetically. Paul nodded his head and smiled. She might have been speaking Russian for all he knew. Then suddenly, and for one second only, he caught sight of Albinus’ eyes looking at him over the book he was holding. p 73

Here's a bit of advice that Rex shared with the couple:

“One can’t build up one’s life on the quick-sands of misfortune,” Rex had said to him. “That is a sin against life. I once had a friend who was a sculptor and whose unerring appreciation of form was almost uncanny. Then, all of a sudden, out of pity he married an ugly, elderly hunchback. I don’t know exactly what happened, but one day, soon after their marriage, they packed two little suitcases, one for each, and went on foot to the nearest lunatic asylum. In my opinion, an artist must let himself be guided solely by his sense of beauty: that will never deceive him.” p 181

And this was a LOL! moment for me in Look at the Harlequins!:

I might have been displeased by the tolerance she showed Basilevski (knowing none of his works and only vaguely aware of his preposterous reputation) had it not occurred to me that the theme of her sympathy was repeating, as it were, the friendly phase of my own initial relations with that faux bonhomme. From behind a more or less Doric column I overheard him asking my naive gentle Annette had she any idea why I hated so fiercely Gorki (for whom he cultivated total veneration). Was it because I resented the world fame of a proletarian? Had I really read any of that wonderful writer's books? Annette had looked puzzled but all at once a charming childish smile illumined her whole face and she recalled The Mother, a corny Soviet film that I had criticized, she said, "because the tears rolling down the faces were too big and too slow." 

"Aha! That explains a lot," proclaimed Basilevski with gloomy satisfaction. p 117

By the way, there's a copy of the 1969 film adaption of Laughter in the Dark on Archives.org. 

Proust and the Subjective Nature of Art

I started reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time (Volume 1), but I put it down after seventy-nine pages for Haddawy's translation of The Arabian Nights. Proust's classic, unlike the Arab classic, didn't make my heart beat heavier, it didn't make my eyes dilate nor did it increase my pulse rate. 

But this reminded of the subjective nature of art. Nabokov opined that, "The first half [of In Search of Lost Time] is the fourth-greatest masterpiece of 20th-century prose." And it appears that Martin Amis would agree with Nabokov, but Amis couldn't get through Nabokov's Ada, which I found enthralling. 

And reading Proust reminded me of an email I got six years ago from Debbie Carter, an agent with Muse Literary Management. Debbie wrote after reading a bit of the MS for Katie, "You have a very appealing style and [sic] I liked the writing’s sense of fun but [sic] I found the plot too jumpy."

How An Aesthete Documents His Aesthetics

Walter Pater writes in the preface to The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry that “To define beauty [...] is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.” 

“What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.”

That one should ask questions like “What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? [...] one must realize such primary data for one’s self, or not at all.”

“The aesthetic critic, then, regards all objects [...], all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations [...].” 

The aesthete should strive “[...] to indicate what the source of the impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he had disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some nature element [...]”

So the next time you hear a piece like Treuting’s “Extremes” (2009), see a piece like Venus Callipyge, read a piece like Nabokov’s “Lilith” and\or bite into a Burger Joint well-down cheeseburger with the works, note like a chemist the effect it has on you, how you’re being moved, how your nature is being modified and the pleasurable sensations being produced. 

Are You a Lonely Writer?

Joyce Carol Oates reportedly said, "Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom."

Richard Ford reportedly said, "Writing is indeed often dark and lonely...."

But Hilma Wolitzer reportedly related, "Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared."

And in terms of having friends, Proust scorned friendships and according to Szeftel in Pniniad, other than attending a few soirees with other Cornell professors, Vera was enough of a friend for Nabokov. 

(Quotes source: www.AdvicetoWriters.com)

Be Careful About What You Snack on While Writing!

Brian Boyd wrote in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years that Nabokov compulsively smoked Gauloises while writing but after visiting a physician due to heart palpitations Nabokov was advised to give up smoking. To ward off the nicotine cravings he started "...compulsively devouring molasses candy..." and subsequently gained sixty pounds. 

Nabokov shared in a Playboy interview, "I became as stout as Cortez-- mainly because I quit smoking [while writing] and started to munch molasses candy instead, with the result that my weight went up from my usual 140 to a monumental and cheerful 200." 

According to Secret Lives of GREAT AUTHORS Balzac often wrote for fifteen hours per day while drinking fifty cups of Turkish coffee. Unsurprisingly. it's suspected that the copious amounts of coffee contributed to his early death.

Compared to Balzac, I drink a meager five to seven half cups of coffee per day, often while writing, with one teaspoon of organic cane sugar; however, when I decided a month ago to forgo the sugar I subsequently lost a considerable amount of weight. I went down a shirt size and two belt loops!

Thus, be careful about what you snack on while writing.

Write for Pleasure, Publish for Money

Lolita and Mr. Girodias
by Vladimir Nabokov

According to Nabokov, Mr. Girodias of Olympia Press agreed to pay him "an advance of 400,000 "anciens" francs (about a thousand dollars)" for Lolita. The first half of the advance was one month late, but after Nabokov grew impatient waiting for the second half, he wrote to Mr. Girodias, "I write for my pleasure, but publish for money." (Evergreen Review)

The Use of Double Entendre in LOLITA and Shakespeare

In an effort to study Nabokov's use of hidden meanings within Lolita, I read Eric Naiman's A Filthy Look at Shakespeare's "Lolita" where Naiman pointed out that upon the first reading of Lolita, one may miss the double-entendre in the following line.

"My life was handled by little Lo in an energetic, matter-of-fact manner as if it were an insensate gadget unconnected with me."

It turns out that the French word for the sex organ (vit) is a homonym of the word for life. And if you consider that Lolita was twelve when she handled Humbert's life, the word life could be considered a double double-entendre. 

Rowe's Nabokov's Deceptive World has an entire chapter and an appendix devoted to Nabokov's use of sexual deception (i.e., sexual double entente). For example, Lolita wrote the following in a letter to her mother and Humbert from camp:

I [crossed out and re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. [Nabokov's brackets.]

The reader learned later in the novel that "sweater" was a reference to 12-year-old Lolita's virginity. The initial reference was to Lolita's "virgin wool sweater", and the subsequent reference was to her virginity, which she lost to Charlie in the woods at camp. 

But that's not all! Nabokov drew the reader's attention to the letter "I" by writing it once, crossing it out and writing it again, which is interesting when the reader considers that "I" and "eye" are references to the "female sexual symbol".

Gently I pressed my quivering sting along her rolling salty eyeball. "Good-goody," she said nictitating.

Nabokov used the same literary technique that was used by Shakespeare, which Eric Partridge spelled out in Shakespeare's Bawdy. Here's an example of Shakespeare's use of double-entendre in the poem "Venus and Adonis":

‘Fondling,’ she saith, ‘since I have hemm’d thee here  

Within the circuit of this ivory pale,

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;  

Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:  

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,  

Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.  

  

‘Within this limit is relief enough,  

Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,  

Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,  

To shelter thee from tempest and from rain:  

Then be my deer, since I am such a park;  

No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.’  

The bold (pun intended) words are defined below:

park - the female body regarded as a domain where a lover may freely roam

deer - figuratively used of man and woman in reference to sexual activities. Possibly influenced by the homophone, (one's) dear or darling. 

mountain - pleasant eminences: breasts, buttocks, and thighs

dale - valley between breasts

fountain - breasts

bottom-grass - the hair growing in and about the crutch [i.e., pubic hair]

plain - belly 

hillock - buttocks

brakes - pubic hair

Why didn't we learn about Shakespeare's bawdy in high school? According to Partridge, Shakespeare's works were bowdlerized prior to the 1960s. 

And if that isn't interesting enough, what about the fact that Adonis was born of an incestuous relationship between Myrrha, a nymphet, and Cinyras, her father?

Librettist Da Ponte's 16-Year-Old Mistress and Muse for DON GIOVANNI

I wrote about Don Giovanni (1787) on The Allure of Nymphets blog because, Giovanni is an ephebophile. A lot is known about Mozart, the opera's composer, but outside of opera snobs, Lorenzo Da Ponte, the opera's librettist, may not be as well known . 

Writers may benefit from what was culled from Memoirs Lorenzo Da Ponte concerning Da Ponte's writing process:

• Like Nabokov, who worked on Eugene Onegin for over 12 hours per day, Da Ponte wrote "for over twelve hours continuous".
• Balzac often wrote for over 12 hours per day as well, while drinking fifty cups of Turkish coffee; however, Da Ponte preferred "a bottle of Tokay to my right," but he drank coffee as well. 
• According to Currey's Daily Rituals How Artists Work, Thomas Mann "smoked while writing, but limited himself to twelve cigarettes and two cigars daily"; however, Da Ponte preferred Seville snuff. 
• And like the writers I referred to in The Allure of Nymphets, 38-year-old Da Ponte was an ephebophile and used his 16-year-old mistress as a source of inspiration while writing Don Giovanni, which shouldn't be surprising when one considers that Giovanni had an "... outstanding passion is the youthful beginner....provided she wears a skirt." 

Writers Rise Above Social Classes

The protagonist in Edmund Wilson's "The Princess with the Golden Hair" which can be found in his Memoirs of Hecate County said, "[Artists] didn't worry about their social position because the life that an artist leads is outside all the social positions. The artist makes his own position, which is about the nearest thing you can get to being above the classes."

Darnton shared in his The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, which I thankfully found in among the $1 book stales at Strand, that "Duclos had proclaimed it triumphantly in his Considerations sur les fession (1750). [In the 18th century] [w]riting had become a new "profession," which conferred a distinguished "estate" upon men of great talent but modest birth..."

"The provincials flocked to Paris in search of glory, money, and the improved estate promised to any writer with sufficient talent...The avenues of advancement having been closed to them because of their humble birth and modest fortunes, they observed that the career of letters, open to everyone, offered another outlet for their ambition."

However, there's nothing wrong with getting a little money out of the deal to finance future artistic endeavors and to stock up on espresso. Like Nabokov wrote, "I write for my pleasure, but publish for money."