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Article: The prodigious George V. Higgins gets it right
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- October 25, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Slow . . . writers. . . of . . . the . . . world, know thine
enemy. He is George V. Higgins, who writes an 80,000-to-100,000 word
first draft of a novel in three weeks!
It's true that he has published a novel a year since winning
fame with his first, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, in 1972. But not
until he bought a computer two years ago was he able to write so
rapidly - and revise so easily. Yes, he does turn out those first
drafts quickly, but it's at white heat - 10 to 11 hours a day seven
days a week.
And his splendid novels of Boston criminal life clearly aren't
the product of a careless paperback hack. He fusses over them, a
task made much easier by his Apple IIe. He revises by ...