Author Birthday – 15 October – P. G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse was born on 15 October 1881 and died on 14 February 1975.

P. G. Wodehouse Quotes

1. It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.
2. It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
3. At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
4. I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.
5. I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
6. It’s the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out.
7. Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realise the heights to which he has climbed.
8. I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.
9. For a humorous novel you’ve got to have a scenario, and you’ve got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in … splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible.

P. G. Wodehouse was an English humourist who wrote novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and journalism. Before beginning a book, he would write up to 400 pages of notes outlining the plot, completing it before deciding on specific character actions. This preparation could take up to two years, and he often worked on two or more novels simultaneously. Wodehouse preferred to write between 4 pm and 7 pm and never worked after dinner. He wrote seven days a week, producing around 2,000 to 3,000 words a day in his younger years, although his pace slowed as he aged. He is best known for his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories. He also co-wrote 15 plays and contributed 250 lyrics to about 30 musical comedies. He was knighted in the January 1975 New Year Honours.

Source for image: Unlisted photographer for Screenland, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P.G._Wodehouse,_1930.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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