Notes from a spasmodic Hercules.

[[From Writer’s Almanac, April 24—about the writer Anthony Trollope]]

For most of his writing life, he continued to work for the British postal service and even helped invent the street-corner mailbox. To turn out his novels, he woke up every morning at 4:00 a.m. and wrote for three hours, producing about a thousand words an hour. In less than 40 years, he published 47 novels, as well as many other books of essays and sketches. He said, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”