Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
The weirdest thing about Vladimir Nabokov’s writing process? Not that he wrote his books in English, his second language (and don’t even get us started on Mr. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, who wrote in his third!), it is that he wrote his books on index cards.
Index cards. The cards your grandma uses to write down her chocolate chip cookie recipe, or that you might’ve used for flashcards in school. Nabokov used index cards to write his novels so he could switch the action around and insert pieces of dialogue or action into the book without having to mess up the paper flow (bear in mind our pal Vlad wrote prior to computers, so his other choice would’ve been a typewriter and reams of paper). Imagine if he had shuffled them differently, or lost the one that said “Make her nickname Lolita!”
(My weirdest writing habit—that I know of—is that I cannot write a single word until I know precisely what living actor my hero looks like. Not only that, the person has to be a) alive b) close to his prime and c) usually British). Liz can’t write without her back to the wall. Period.)