Burgess was prolific, writing six novels in 1960. "I refuse no reasonable offer of work and very few unreasonable ones" he would confess in 1978.
It's unclear whether this urgency can be attributed to a doctor predicting that a brain tumour left him with (as much as) a year to live:
After fighting in World War II, he worked for five years as a colonial education officer in Malaya. While he was there, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a doctor told him he had only one year to live. He later wrote: "I had been granted something I had never had before: a whole year to live. I would not be run over by a bus tomorrow, nor knifed on the Brighton racetrack. I would not choke on a bone. If I fell in the wintry sea I would not drown. I had a whole year, a long time. In that year I had to earn for my prospective widow... I would have to turn myself into a professional writer."
More How we work.
Comments