A chat ...

... with Elmore Leonard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

When I was working at an ad agency, which I did through the '50s -- I left in '61 -- I was getting up at 5 a.m., and I'd write for two hours. I was just beginning to write. I didn't know it beforehand, but I learned I could write two pages, a page an hour. I did it all through the '50s. I wrote five books and thirty short stories that way. But now it's a lot harder; it just gets harder. For a while, maybe, it gets easier -- you're relaxed, and you can just write what you want, and it seems to work. But then, you don't want to sound like you're imitating yourself, and you don't want to use the same sorts of situations over and over.