10 Surprising Surfaces Famous Writers Have Written On

1. An Airplane Motion Sickness Bag
I bet you never thought you could compose your novel during takeoff and landing! J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, said that she once wrote on an (empty) airplane sick bag. She generally prefers writing with a black pen on a notepad, but hey, if you’re stuck in the air with your tray table up, you need to get creative!
2. Index Cards
Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote his novels on index cards so that he could easily move them around in whatever order he pleased. He kept empty cards under his pillow for nocturnal moments of inspiration and he found them great for traveling too. In fact, Nabokov wrote Lolita on index cards during road trips across the U.S. with his wife and son.
3. Cardboard and Crayon
Irish post-modern writer James Joyce had some unusual writerly habits, largely because of his poor eyesight. For much of his later works, including parts of Finnegan’s Wake, Joyce scrawled on large pieces of cardboard in bright red crayon so that he could more easily see his own writing.

4. Scrap paper
Pulitzer-prize winning poet Wallace Stevens liked to compose his poems while out on long walks in the morning or during his lunch hour. While walking, Stevens would jot down lines on scraps of paper in his pockets. Upon arriving at his office, he would hand the bits of paper to his secretary to type up.
5. Scrolls
Edgar Allan Poe apparently had a taste for theatrical flair, not just in his stories but in his writing process. His habit was to create large scrolls by affixing individual sheets of paper together, end to end, with sealing wax.
6. Book Margins
Mark Twain liked to write in the margins of great literary works that were part of his own personal library. He scratched his literary edits into books whenever he thought they could be better written, and his notes were often hilariously scathing. Sure, Twain wasn’t composing literature so much as critiquing it, but it just goes to show that you can’t stop a writer from writing on anything.
7. Butcher Paper
It’s cheap, it’s abundant, and it never seems to run out! Butcher paper seems like the ideal way to lay out your novel when you’re in the writing zone. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury got an early start to his literary career by writing on butcher paper when he was eleven years old.

8. Napkins
When all else fails, you can always find a cocktail napkin to write on! While drinking at the Algonquin Hotel, Ernest Hemingway bet his literary friends that he could write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end in just six words. He scribbled onto a napkin, “For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn,” passed it around the table, and took home his winnings.
9. The Back of a Receipt
They say that you should always keep your receipts, but I’ve never actually found a good use for them until now. Comedian, actor, and writer W.C. Fields once scribbled down a plot idea on the back of a grocery bill in a pinch. He subsequently sold the story to Universal Studios for a hefty $25,000. Think of all the writing you could do on back of your CVS receipt and what that might be worth one day!
10. The Walls
If you’ve completely run out of any paper materials at all, you can take a page out of William Faulkner and write on the walls. Faulkner wrote the outline for A Fable on the walls of his home in Mississippi. His wife was none too pleased, so keep that in mind before you try scribbling on the walls.
What odd objects have you used to jot down ideas on the fly?