For a Danish Baroness who did not necessarily need to write, Karen Blixen took the vocation seriously. Publishing under the pen name Isak Dinesen, she wrote poetic prose, memoir (Out of Africa), and lovingly crafted Romantic-styled short stories (Seven Gothic Tales).

She didn’t feel the need to do things the standard way. As she related to The Paris Review:

During the German occupation of Denmark I thought I should go mad with boredom and dullness. I wanted so to be amused, to amuse myself, and besides I was short of money, so I went to my publisher in Copenhagen and said, look here, will you give me an advance on a novel, and send me a stenographer to dictate it to? They said they would, and she appeared and I started dictating. I had no idea at all of what the story would be about when I began. I added a little every day, improvising. It was very confusing to the poor stenographer…

Her oft-quoted recipe for success was quite simple:

I write a little every day, without hope and without despair…