We all know that coffee is a writer’s best friend but the 19th Century French author Honoré de Balzac took his caffeine in startling amounts, drinking up to 50 cups a day.
That did help Balzac (pictured holding his palpitating heart) to write over 60 novels, short stories and plays, collectively known as The Human Comedy, writing with a quill at a pace reckoned to be the equivalent of 30 words a minute on a typewriter.
William Faulkner also liked to have a beverage or two while writing but in his case he followed the proud American writerly tradition of knocking back the whisky, often in the company of his fellow author Sherwood Anderson.
These and other interesting facts about the Quirks and Strange Habits of Famous Writers have been put together in an infographic on the CustomWriting website. You can click on the infographic here to check out the full-size version.
The site also features some good advice on 15 Ways to Write Faster, (which doesn’t recommend 50 cups of coffee a day), including how to Silence Your Inner Editor by visualizing him and then locking him in a safe.