49. Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders

Fannie Hurst, the American short-story writer and novelist, was highly popular during the 1920s and was also one of the highest-paid writers. 

Although her novels are now mostly out of print, they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages. 

Hurst briefly hosted a television talk show called Showcase, which was highly successful, and probably the first such platform on which homosexual men spoke for themselves.

All these activities needed a lot of energy and time.

"Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders," the nineteenth-century English journalist Walter Bagehot once wrote. Hurst fell decisively into the latter group. 

Although she published more than three hundred short stories during her lifetime, as well as nineteen novels and several plays, making her one of the most widely read female authors, Hurst never found the writing process congenial. 

In her autobiography, she wrote of "that stubborn hiatus between the idea and the written word. The concept is lively and boiling in my mind, the words coming in slow and painful trickle onto paper, there to torture with their inadequacies." 

She continued, "That monkey on my back has never relinquished hold in all the years. The urge to write versus the torturous process of getting it said." 

Despite the torture, Hurst wrote for several hours a day, every day, for pretty much her entire adult life. 

"My own workaday routine, five to six to seven hours at the desk, holds with the years," she wrote. 

"Like a woman's work, the author's work is never done."

 (Top Photo Courtesy: lutece-language.com, with thanks)