Agatha Christie was working on two novels at the same time. Daphné Du Maurier found her inspiration in a cabin hidden at the bottom of her Cornish garden.
Ernest Hemingway wrote 500 words a day; Stephen King, 2000. Émile Zola wrote three pages a day and stuck to it. Simone de Beauvoir worked eight hours a day with a break for lunch. Georges Simenon finished a novel every four months and took the names of his heroes from the telephone directory. Vladimir Nabokov wrote on index cards.