There's a sign in Danielle Steel's office that reads, "There are no miracles. There is only discipline." It's a dutiful message, and yet the sheer amount that Steel has accomplished in her five-decade career does seem like the stuff of dreams.
Let's look at the numbers, shall we? The author has written 179 books, which have been translated into 43 languages. Twenty-two of them have been adapted for television, and two of those adaptations have received Golden Globe nominations. Steel releases seven new novels a year—her latest, Blessing in Disguise, is out this week—and she's at work on five to six new titles at all times. In 1989 Steel was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having a book on the New York Times best-seller list for the most consecutive weeks of any author—381, to be exact. To pull it off, she works 20 to 22 hours a day. (A couple times a month, when she feels the crunch, she spends a full 24 hours at her desk.)
Steel writes in her home office. Most of the time, that's in Paris, but sometimes she's at her home in San Francisco, where she writes on her 1946 Olympia standard typewriter, which she's nicknamed Olly. "Olly's a big, heavy machine and it's older than I am," Steel tells Glamour. "It has a very smooth flow to it . I have anywhere between 12 to 15 of them that I've bought over the years, but they're not good enough to work on. I keep them for parts in case there's ever a problem, because this is a very endangered species!"
Steel is a creature of habit. She gets to her office—by 8:30 A.M., where she can often be found in her cashmere nightgown. In the morning she'll have one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee (she gave up full-throated caffeine 25 years ago). After lunch and as the day wears on, she'll nibble on miniature bittersweet chocolate bars. "Dead or alive, rain or shine, I get to my desk and I do my work. Sometimes I'll finish a book in the morning, and by the end of the day, I've started another project," Steel says.
She credits her boundless energy for her productivity and also her drive to push through moments when she's stuck. "I keep working. The more you shy away from the material, the worse it gets. You're better off pushing through and ending up with 30 dead pages you can correct later than just sitting there with nothing," she advises. Her output is also the result of a near superhuman ability to run on little sleep. "I don't get to bed until I'm so tired I could sleep on the floor. If I have four hours, it's really a good night for me," Steel says.
She's always been like this, even as a kid growing up in France. Before playing with friends after school, she'd come home and immediately complete her homework. By 19, Steel had written her first book—she’d promised herself that if she got it to sell, she'd be content, prepared to give up writing and focus on her family. The novel sold in a week. One hundred and seventy-nine books later, she still hasn't been able to quit.
Steel never set out to be a best-seller. In fact, she was made to feel embarrassed of her success. "I grew up in Europe, where it was not considered polite for a woman to be working, and I was married to two different men who did not like that I worked," she says. "But I was lucky because I could work at home when my kids were asleep." (Steel has nine children.) "It was kind of this invisible thing that I did," she adds. "I never had success as a goal. I had this drive to to write the stories that came to me—and to conquer them. It came from the gut, not from the cash register." Even now Steel still encounters people who are put off by her illustrious career. "About 10 years ago someone asked me, 'Oh, do you have an agent?' I mean, do they think I stand on the street corner and try to sell this stuff?" she says. Or another time at a party, "Someone said to me, 'Are you still writing?' And I wanted to say, 'I guess you don't read The New York Times.'"
Let's look at the numbers, shall we? The author has written 179 books, which have been translated into 43 languages. Twenty-two of them have been adapted for television, and two of those adaptations have received Golden Globe nominations. Steel releases seven new novels a year—her latest, Blessing in Disguise, is out this week—and she's at work on five to six new titles at all times. In 1989 Steel was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having a book on the New York Times best-seller list for the most consecutive weeks of any author—381, to be exact. To pull it off, she works 20 to 22 hours a day. (A couple times a month, when she feels the crunch, she spends a full 24 hours at her desk.)
Steel writes in her home office. Most of the time, that's in Paris, but sometimes she's at her home in San Francisco, where she writes on her 1946 Olympia standard typewriter, which she's nicknamed Olly. "Olly's a big, heavy machine and it's older than I am," Steel tells Glamour. "It has a very smooth flow to it . I have anywhere between 12 to 15 of them that I've bought over the years, but they're not good enough to work on. I keep them for parts in case there's ever a problem, because this is a very endangered species!"Steel is a creature of habit. She gets to her office—by 8:30 A.M., where she can often be found in her cashmere nightgown. In the morning she'll have one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee (she gave up full-throated caffeine 25 years ago). After lunch and as the day wears on, she'll nibble on miniature bittersweet chocolate bars. "Dead or alive, rain or shine, I get to my desk and I do my work. Sometimes I'll finish a book in the morning, and by the end of the day, I've started another project," Steel says.
She credits her boundless energy for her productivity and also her drive to push through moments when she's stuck. "I keep working. The more you shy away from the material, the worse it gets. You're better off pushing through and ending up with 30 dead pages you can correct later than just sitting there with nothing," she advises. Her output is also the result of a near superhuman ability to run on little sleep. "I don't get to bed until I'm so tired I could sleep on the floor. If I have four hours, it's really a good night for me," Steel says.
She's always been like this, even as a kid growing up in France. Before playing with friends after school, she'd come home and immediately complete her homework. By 19, Steel had written her first book—she’d promised herself that if she got it to sell, she'd be content, prepared to give up writing and focus on her family. The novel sold in a week. One hundred and seventy-nine books later, she still hasn't been able to quit.
Steel never set out to be a best-seller. In fact, she was made to feel embarrassed of her success. "I grew up in Europe, where it was not considered polite for a woman to be working, and I was married to two different men who did not like that I worked," she says. "But I was lucky because I could work at home when my kids were asleep." (Steel has nine children.) "It was kind of this invisible thing that I did," she adds. "I never had success as a goal. I had this drive to to write the stories that came to me—and to conquer them. It came from the gut, not from the cash register." Even now Steel still encounters people who are put off by her illustrious career. "About 10 years ago someone asked me, 'Oh, do you have an agent?' I mean, do they think I stand on the street corner and try to sell this stuff?" she says. Or another time at a party, "Someone said to me, 'Are you still writing?' And I wanted to say, 'I guess you don't read The New York Times.'"
by Samantha Leach, Glamour | Read more:
Image: Danielle Steel
