“A successful writing day is the day that I suffer in the morning, and I have fun in the evening.” -Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho (paulocoelho on Facebook) has long been one of my writing inspirations.

His books, of near universal appeal, span from The Alchemist to the most recent Adultery and have been translated into more than 70 languages.

Few people know that The Alchemist, which has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide, was originally published by a small Brazilian publisher to the tune of… 900 copies. They declined to reprint it. It wasn’t until after his subsequent novel (Brida) that The Alchemist was revived and took off.

I, for one, have always been impressed with consistent writers. Paulo, who averages one book every two years, is staggeringly consistent. As I type this, I am under the pressure of deadlines and often feel as Kurt Vonnegut did: “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

My output is erratic at best, and I wondered: how does Paulo write? What is his process? How does he think about it?

I reached out to him, and he was kind enough to reply with the audio I’ve included in the podcast. In it, he provides some gems and answers the following questions (see below), which I posed to him (I provide my own abbreviated answers in brackets)…