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Brooklynite Writes First Novel While Riding F Train
By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 22, 2009
Modified Apr 22, 2009
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 22, 2009
Modified Apr 22, 2009
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While you were busy checking out possible candidates for a Missed Connection post and listening to your podcasts, 36-year-old Brooklyn writer Peter Brett wrote a novel while commuting on the F train. Feeling like an underachiever yet? He wrote the novel, his first, entirely on his smartphone. Now the "dark, demonic fantasy," titled The Warded Man, is sitting pretty in bookstores. The Daily News reports that Brett worked in medical publishing, and for the two years it took him to finish the 400-page novel, the F was his muse on his daily commute to and from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop and Times Square. He told the paper, "I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time. I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half." Now a full-time writer, he combats writer's block by taking rides on the train.
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commute
f train
novel
Peter Brett
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The Warded Man
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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