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My Writing Life: Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He is the author of eighteen books and holds the record of having the most bestsellers of any author on the Sunday Times bestseller list in the last fifty years. A Short History of Nearly Everything, first published in 2003, spent 106 weeks in the chart, won both the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize and is the biggest-selling popular science book of the twenty-first century.

1. What book should every writer read?

Fowler’s Modern English Usage. It is idiosyncratic and not always easy to find your way around, but it is full of sound, authoritative advice on how to write correctly and well.

2. What is your typical writing day like?

I am retired, so I no longer have a writing day. When I was working, I generally tried to get to my desk early in the morning to leave afternoons free for gardening. (We have a large garden that wants to be a wilderness.) But, as with most nonfiction writers, much of the time I wasn’t at my desk at all, but away from home doing research, so there wasn’t really a typical day, which was, of course, one of the perks of the job.

3. Who has been an influential figure in your writing career?

My dear, saintly wife. If she hadn’t been willing to run the household alone for much of the time, I could never have gone off to do the interesting and exciting work I did.

4. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your career as a professional writer?

Brace yourself: critics can be nasty.

5. What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?

It’s more an observation than advice, but my favourite comment on writing was by Thomas Mann, who said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

6. What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?

Being made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society and having the Durham University library named after me.

7. What are you reading right now?

I have just flown home from Australia, and I have a longstanding habit of reading a Patrick O’Brian novel on really long haul flights. I don’t know any books I can sink into more reliably to help the hours pass. The one I have just finished was The Yellow Admiral.

8. Bookmarker or page-folder?

Folder.

This article originally appeared on our Substack. 

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