Author Quirks: Hugh Howey

Next up is Hugh Howey, author of Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue. I asked him:

What's a quirky or little-known fact about yourself, your writing, and/or one of your novels? (For example, you can tell us about a non-standard pet you have, an unusual way you do your writing, a strange real life incident that inspired a scene in one of your novels, or so on.)


Hugh Howey's answer:

I find it impossible to write unless my feet are elevated. My computer desk is unusually high (more of a craft table than a standard desk), so I sit at it with my feet way up in the air and my chair turned to the side. I wrote my first two books like this, and it took a few weeks to realize how bad this would be for my poor neck. The crick was so deeply ingrained, that I couldn’t get it to go away -- but I couldn’t stop writing either, so I endured it.

It drove my wife crazy to see me in agony, especially since it was so avoidable. She would come in and arrange my monitor, or try to get me to sit up properly, anything to lessen what she knew would be a future source of misery (mainly to her poor eardrums, as I was fond of complaining about my self-inflicted injury).

We were in Staples one day, after many an argument over where and how I should sit to do my writing, and came across an inexpensive monitor arm. My lovely wife insisted I purchase the thing and install it at home...so I did. For a few weeks, my monitor hung off the side of my desk, right in front of me as I laid back in my office chair with my legs up. It was delightfully comfortable. And absolutely impossible for me to write like that.

So I moved the arm to the back of my desk, which makes it hold the screen about where the stand did before. I’m a week or so into the draft of book number three, and the writing is proceeding apace.

And, in order to look to my left, I am back to rotating at the waist and complaining about the crick in my neck.

Thank you, Mr. Howey, for sharing this quirky story about yourself.