[As you, hopefully, soldier on with “Still Time” I thought it would be a good time to compare myself as an author with John Steinbeck. Here’s a trailer from the Hollywood version of his epic novel. SB SM]
https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/how-john-steinbeck-actually-wrote
“A good writer always works at the impossible.”
Oct 05, 2026
In 1951, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) finished his most ambitious novel, placed it in a box he carved himself out of mahogany, and gave it to his friend and editor Pascal (Pat) Covici.
The box bears the novel’s title—East of Eden—as well as Hebrew letters from Cain and Abel’s biblical story: timshel, roughly translated as “thou mayest.”1 It is the last word Adam speaks in the novel, and it is a theme that animates the hundreds of pages preceding it.
Timshel—thou mayest—poses a moral question about free will and our ability to choose good or evil.2 This question of choice haunts Steinbeck’s characters, just as it haunted its author during the novel’s composition. For what is an author but the person who chooses—how characters behave, how to tell a story? Choice is a privilege and a burden.
East of Eden, often hailed as the great American novel, was a monster of a book to write. Filled with ancient struggle, it reaches back to Cain and Abel’s tragic tale, as it weaves together multi-generational plot lines.
Now, as Zoe Kazan’s adaptation airs on Netflix, I’ve been thinking about how Steinbeck actually wrote this great novel, which he thought of as his most ambitious and greatest work.
Steinbeck journaled ritualistically on the notebook pages facing his draft. When he unbound his notebook and then placed the pages in his carved box, the back of most draft pages contained the section’s process notes.
So, let’s open Steinbeck’s mahogany box and explore how he actually wrote East of Eden.
Steinbeck’s Ledgers
When Steinbeck set off to write the story of the Trasks and Hamiltons, he knew it would be a struggle. As Steinbeck explains early in his process notes,
A good writer always works at the impossible.3
To support himself through the process, he began every writing day by “warming up” with a letter to Covici, written on the left-hand side of a large ledger Covici had given him. He explains,
I intend to keep a double-entry book-manuscript on the right-hand page and work diary on the left. Thus they will be together.4
The ledger was so large, it ended up hurting his hand. So he decided to disassemble the notebook in favor of solitary pages:
You know I am really a stupid fool. All of these years I have written in a big book because I love the fine paper with lines. But to get the paper I have to take the covers. And I get my wrist burned and very tired after I pass the middle of the page. The rise of an inch makes a very great difference in tiredness. Now after all these years, it occurs to me that I can just as well take the pages out and write on each sheet separately. 5
Steinbeck spent a lot of time writing about his materials, especially his pencils. He had spent years looking for “the perfect pencil” only to realize,
…it was not the pencils but me.6
Sometimes his pencils glide easily over the page, other times they crack. No writing day is exactly the same. But then the pencils begin hurting his fingers. He coats a cut with “nail polish to protect it from the pencil.”7
Steinbeck’s Bad Writing Days
In addition to his hands, Steinbeck struggled with depression and anxiety induced stomach aches. He knew that hating his own writing is an inevitable part of the process, as he writes in the journal:
…many times before I finish this book I shall hate it with a deadly hatred. I shall detest the day when I started it. It will seem the poorest piece of crap that was ever set down. This feeling will reach a fine peak on about the 500th page. Once I pass that I will continue to work in a state of shock. And when it is done I will be lost for a long time.8
Steinbeck describes himself “dawdling” on many days. Sometimes “the fire went out”; other times he loses trust in his mind. A bad writing day, he writes,
…makes me suspicious and untrustful of myself. My brain acts like a bad child, willful and sneering…9
This isn’t to say every writing day was a bad one. Some days felt invigorating. At one point he gushes,
I have never enjoyed my own work as I have this book…10
Steinbeck’s Other Journals
At three points in his life, Steinbeck documented his writing process with religious devotion: while working on Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus, and East of Eden.
This practice began in 1938 as he wrote Grapes of Wrath. He experimented with keeping a working diary.11 The entries are brief and flooded with anxiety. He records so much stomach pain—
I don’t know whether it was just plain terror of the ending or not. My stomach went to pieces yesterday.12
Steinbeck did something similar in 1946-7 while he was working on The Wayward Bus. In this notebook, he started to track his physical and mental health:
1 day
Rating 1–5
1 being excellent, 5 being lousy
May 1—
first real work day.
phys. chart 4, mental [chart] 3, 8:20 (“My Personal Book” 33)13
In his working journals, Steinbeck shows how the physical and emotional health of the author intertwine with the writing process. To Steinbeck’s mind, Grapes of Wrath and The Wayward Bus were preparation for his magnum opus: the gigantic book that would become East of Eden.
In a drafted, though unused, dedication to East of Eden, Steinbeck likened finishing a book to a kind of death and the dedication a “kind of requiem.”14 He describes the books he authored as “embalmed corpses.”15 In this way, the mahogany box starts to resemble a coffin. As Steinbeck explained, once a novel was published it became a dead thing to him.
But, of course, East of Eden is not dead to us. Cain and Abel’s struggle—the struggle to choose good or evil, the struggle to compose a life, and the struggle to create—remains as vital as ever.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/M9NWvGZViCg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/M9NWvGZViCg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
Yours in note-taking,
P.S. Steinbeck’s journals offer a lot of lessons on how to write—especially in the way he thought about creating East of Eden’s most enigmatic character, Cathy. Paid subscribers, look out for a postscript on how to apply Steinbeck’s lessons to your own note-taking.
Here’s Hollywood, Take 2:
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