Writing Habit: Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass

INTERVIEWER
What is your daily schedule when you work?

GRASS
When I’m working on the first version, I write between five and seven pages a day. For the third version, three pages a day. It’s very slow.

INTERVIEWER
You do this in the morning or in the afternoon or at night?

GRASS
Never, never at night. I don’t believe in writing at night because it comes too easily. When I read it in the morning it’s not good. I need daylight to begin. Between nine and ten o’clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music. After breakfast I work, and then take a break for coffee in the afternoon. I start again and finish at seven o’clock in the evening.

From: The Paris Review, Summer 1991