LOTS of writing...

I keep mentioning that the Brits somehow produce not only the best "workaday" writers in the English language (historians, journalists, etc.) but the most fluent. Their output is extraordinary, and the ability to write very fast and well isn't limited to a few.

Here's the New Yorker profile of Hitchens:

When we returned with our provisions, at about one o’clock, Hitchens, who had been working, was sitting at his desk with a drink. On the walls around him were some color printouts of kittens and puppies sitting in lines. He pointed to a manuscript of “God Is Not Great,” a book that he thinks may have more heft and permanence than anything he has written before, in a career of rapid responses and public lashings. “I have been, in my head, writing it for many years,” he said. “Religion is going to be the big subject until the end of my life. And I wanted to make an intervention.”

Hitchens had already finished the morning period of mail and e-mail he refers to as “telegrams and anger” (a quotation from “Howards End”). He had given his attention that day to the wiretap lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency; in January, he accepted the A.C.L.U.’s invitation to become a named plaintiff, denting his reputation as an Administration cheerleader. He had also begun a review of Ann Coulter’s “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” for an obscure new British journal. He was not doing it for free, but the gesture was still generous; Hitchens, who is unusually lacking in professional competitiveness, makes himself available to younger writers and editors. He also teaches: he is presently a visiting professor at the New School, and he is supervising the Ph.D. thesis, on Orwell, of Thomas Veale, a U.S. Army major, who calls Hitchens the “only nineteen-thirties liberal in existence.”

Hitchens had started writing an hour or so before, planning on leniency: “I was thinking of hammering her for the first half and being a bit gentle the second.” (He shares Coulter’s disregard for Joseph Wilson, the diplomat.) But he had written a thousand words, and he was not through hammering. “I thought I’d do a thousand words by lunchtime—my usual ambition if I’m doing a short piece,” he said. But he now saw that he could get it all done before eating. “If I can’t f*** up Ann Coulter before lunch then I shouldn’t be in this business,” he said. Not long afterward, he came into the kitchen and handed me the finished review.

We had lunch outside. Hitchens ignored the sandwiches and put his fork in the cherry pie, moving outward from the center. He had a postproduction glow. “Writing is mainly recreational,” he said. “I’m not happy when I’m not doing it.” He can entertain himself in other ways—he strained to remember them—such as “playing with the cats and the daughter. But if I take even a day away from it I’m very uneasy.”

In the past few years, Hitchens has published, in addition to his books on Orwell, Jefferson, and Paine, a book of oppositionist advice entitled “Letters to a Young Contrarian”; a collection of his writings on the Iraq war; and a giant miscellany, “Love, Poverty, and War.” He wrote “God Is Not Great” in four months. He has contributed to dozens of publications (including Golf Digest—he plays the game). He almost never uses the backspace, delete, or cut-and-paste keys. He writes a single draft, at a speed that caused his New Statesman colleagues to place bets on how long it would take him to finish an editorial. What emerges is ready for publication, except for one weakness: he’s not an expert punctuator, which reinforces the notion that he is in the business of transcribing a lecture he can hear himself giving.

Earlier, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked, Blue had said to me, “Once in a while, it seems like he might be drunk. Aside from that, even though he’s obviously an alcoholic, he functions at a really high level and he doesn’t act like a drunk, so the only reason it’s a bad thing is it’s taking out his liver, presumably. It would be a drag for Henry Kissinger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.”

He Knew He Was Right
By Ian Parker
October 16, 2006
The New Yorker

500 words an hour, no second drafts

fluent

Or take a look at Niall Ferguson's ouevre. He's in his 40s, right?

publications here; journalism here

There's so much of the stuff he can't fit it all on one page.

[pause]

Oh, swell.

Niall Ferguson has teamed up with Muzzy Lane Software to Create Next Generation Video Games (pdf file):

“I’m getting involved with Muzzy Lane because it's a chance for me to bring my life's work – not just the study of history but also the questioning of it – to a much broader audience,” says Prof. Ferguson. “Video games are a cultural phenomenon, fundamentally transforming the way people think about how big things happen. Muzzy Lane’s first game, MAKING HISTORY: The Calm & The Storm, convinced me that they are taking smart games to an entirely new level of historical sophistication.”

That's your World Affairs Icon talking.