"But as for the number that you so politely ask after," he added with a doleful look, "I am afraid it is so small that I am ashamed to mention it: I doubt I have published more than a score. Not, mark you," he said with a skip, "that I have not conceived, worked out and entirely composed at least ten times as many, and on this very sward too, excellent tales, capital tales that have made me (a partial judge, I confess) laugh aloud with pleasure. But you must understand, sir, that each man has his particular way of writing, and mine is by saying my pieces over as I walk -- I find the physical motion dispels the gross humours and encourages the flow of ideas. Yet that is where the danger lies: if it encourage them too vigorously, if my piece is formed to my full satisfaction, as just now I conceived the chapter in which Sophonisba confines Roderigo in the Iron Maiden on pretence of wanton play and begins to turn the screw, why then it is done, finished; and my mind, my imagination will have nothing more to do with it -- declines even to write it down, or, on compulsion, records a mere frigid catalogue of unlikely statements. The only way for me to succeed is by attaining a near-success, a coitus interruptus with my Muse, if you will forgive me the expression, and then running home to my pen for the full consummation."

--Patric O'Brian, The Letter of Marque