Process of writing can be as fascinating as the words themselves

How is it that writers write?

That question has long fascinated me.

As a fifth-grader at Lindbergh School in Costa Mesa, I wrote a poem that was published in my church’s bulletin. I was stunned. I felt like a celebrity. Girls looked at me and tittered.

The poem has long since been lost, but I think it had something to do with giving thanks — a subject about which I knew bupkis.

For a brief period in elementary school, I wrote and distributed a neighborhood “newspaper.”

Throughout high school and college, I wrote for the student newspaper and as a stringer with the Globe-Herald (now Daily Pilot). I also wrote short stories, some one-act plays and editorials, articles and columns.

I wrote news releases, feature stories, advertising copy, brochure material, scripts and speeches for 37 years as Orange Coast College’s community relations director.

During those years I was privileged to win 41 first-place national, regional and state writing awards.

Though noticeably long in tooth, I remain obsessed with writing. Not so much with what writers write but how they do it — the process. Where do they write? When do they write? How do they write: keyboard and hard drive, or pencil on paper?

I’m convinced you can’t be a good writer without first being an enthusiastic reader. I read a fair amount and have my parents to thank for that. They set the example.

One of my favorite authors is Canadian Roman Catholic writer Michael D. O’Brien. Incredibly fruitful, O’Brien is author of more than two dozen books noted for their length and depth. O’Brien accurately describes his books as “gargantuan.”

He’s been characterized by some as a 21st-century Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.

“He’s more Russian than the Russians,” quips my brother-in-law, Don, a Notre Dame grad and O’Brien enthusiast.

I’ve read a dozen of his works. His 2007 book, “The Island of the World,” a massive tome, looks at the turbulent world of the Balkans from 1933 into the third millennium. It’s perhaps the best novel I’ve ever read.

How does he do it? He must possess prodigious self-discipline, churning out a thousand-page novel every year, on average.

O’Brien credits prayer — not self-discipline — for his weighty output.

“When I’m praying consistently for the good of the work and for the good of those who may one day read it, the process and inspirations flow swiftly and clear,” he told the Catholic Weekly in 2015.

Many plot twists come to him unplanned.

Then there’s Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works in French bistros, in cursive and on legal pads … with an occasional glass of muscatel.

This is just a hunch, but I bet he didn’t write more than 500 words a day. But each word was labored over. His sentences were routinely scratched out and recast. Tighter, always tighter.

I’ve read many of his books. My favorites include “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Sun Also Rises.” “The Old Man and the Sea” can be read in an afternoon — but what an afternoon!

Prolific writer Tim Keller is another favorite. He’s been called a modern-day C.S. Lewis.

Keller is pastor to a huge New York City Presbyterian congregation and speaks around the world. He has what he calls a “summer season” of writing and a favorite “study” in Florida where he writes for two weeks every June.

Each two-week period produces a book. How can he possibly birth a book in so little time?

I’ve read more than a half-dozen of his works. He is erudite, thought-provoking and persuasive.

This is how I think he does it: His books are nonfiction and instructive in nature and based on sermons he has preached.

“(My books are) … forged not in writing but in preaching,” he was quoted in Coram Deo, a Christian blog.

Even so, much writing and cobbling together must take place during his two-week Florida window. But the research is basically done.

There are as many modes of writing as there are writers who write, and I love hearing about each of them.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.