The image is almost too neat for a writer of his reputation. Truman Capote on his back, a cigarette burning down, a cup of coffee somewhere near his elbow, a pencil moving across a pad held up over his chest. He didn't cook up the picture to charm photographers. He described it plainly to George Plimpton for the Paris Review in 1957, and the phrase he used that day has trailed after his name ever since.
The Completely Horizontal Author
When Plimpton asked about his working habits, Capote didn't hedge or dress it up. He couldn't think sitting upright. He needed to be flat, either in bed or stretched along a couch, with two things kept inside arm's reach. One was a cigarette. The other was coffee. This wasn't a lazy habit he'd drifted into over the years, and it wasn't a stunt cooked up for a magazine. He framed it as the basic condition under which any sentence arrived at all, which is about as far from a pose as a working method gets.
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.
Truman Capote, Paris Review, 1957
He meant the word completely. For decades, friends and interviewers found him in the same position, propped against pillows with a yellow legal pad, a man who had turned the horizontal into his desk. The cigarette and the coffee weren't only scene-setting either. He described himself as someone who had to be puffing and sipping to keep the engine turning, and he read the passing hours off whatever sat in the cup. Coffee in the morning slid to mint tea, then to sherry, then to martinis by evening. He drafted the stories and novels that made his name from exactly this pose, a small man half swallowed by cushions, writing slowly and rewriting as he went. What looks like languor in the photographs was really the physical shape of his concentration.
Pencil First, Typewriter Last
Lying down shaped the mechanics of the work, not just the mood of it. Capote wrote his first version in longhand, in pencil, then wrote a second complete revision the same way, still by hand and still flat on his back. The typewriter came out only after that. Even then he refused to sit at a proper desk to use it. He typed a third draft onto a particular yellow paper with the machine balanced across his knees, in bed, so the whole job stayed horizontal from the first scratch of the pencil to the last line typed. Two full drafts in pencil is a slow way to build a book, and that slowness was the point. By the time a sentence reached the machine, he had already lived with it twice.
He kept small superstitions running alongside the writing, from adding up numbers to refusing three cigarette butts in a single ashtray. For the yellow paper, the drink that changed by the hour, and the full set of quirks, see the full Truman Capote writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Write where your body relaxes. Capote thought best flat on his back. Find the position that quiets your head, whether that's a couch, a walk, or a kitchen table, and stop apologizing for it.
- Split drafting from typing. His pencil drafts kept the fast, loose thinking away from the machine. Try writing the messy first pass by hand before you go anywhere near a keyboard.
- Keep your small comforts close. The coffee and the cigarette were part of the ritual that told his brain it was time to work. Pick your own cue and keep it within reach of your chair or bed.
- Protect the setup that works. He never talked himself out of the horizontal habit to look more serious about his craft. If a strange method gets the words out of you, guard it.