From The Wall Street Journal:
Romance writer Nora Roberts didn't bother to celebrate when she finished her 200th book, "The Witness."
"I don't really count," says Ms. Roberts, a 61-year-old grandmother with red hair and a gravelly smoker's voice.
She took a couple of days off to catch up on chores and gardening. Then she launched into her 201st, "Celebrity in Death," the next installment of a futuristic romantic suspense series that she writes under the pen name J.D. Robb. She's since finished her 202nd, a romance novel set near her home in Maryland, and her 203rd, "Delusion in Death," another J.D. Robb book. She's now writing her 204th, "Whiskey Beach," a romantic suspense novel set in coastal Massachusetts.
And what is her secret? Well...
Ms. Roberts writes for six to eight hours every day, fueled by Diet Pepsi and Winston Filter 100s cigarettes. She doesn't use ghost writers, co-writers or a research assistant. "Then I'd have to talk to somebody, and I'd rather not," she says.
Read the rest here.
Some of us are just constitutionally suited for this line of work. Me, I do enjoy talking to people, hate diet soda, and don't smoke, so it was always going to be an uphill battle.