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>>25328931
Nabokov woke up early, usually between 6:00 and 7:00 AM. He noted that he woke up with a clear mind and immediately felt the urge to get to work.
Early Morning Writing (In Bed): He didn't head straight to a desk. Instead, he would stay in bed for the first few hours of the morning, writing on his famous bristol index cards using a sharp pencil. He preferred writing on his back or side while propped up by pillows.
8:30 AM (Breakfast & Correspondence): Around 8:30 AM, he would finally get out of bed to have breakfast with his wife, Véra (who was also his editor, translator, and administrative lifeline). During or immediately after breakfast, they would review the morning's mail and correspondence together.
9:00 AM – Midday (The Desk/Window Shift): After breakfast, he transitioned to more formal writing. He would stand or sit at a desk positioned right in front of a window overlooking Lake Geneva. He would work steadily here until about noon, reading, revising, and filling out more index cards.
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>>25328964
To followup,
Nabokov did not write chronologically from page one to the end. Because he used index cards, his morning writing session was like filling in a crossword puzzle, to quote:
"The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose... until the novel is done."
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>>25329038
If the weather was nice, Nabokov abandoned writing entirely to pursue his second life as a serious, self-taught lepidopterist (a butterfly scientist).
Armed with a net and a collection pouch, he and Véra would take a bus or hike up into the Swiss hills and alpine meadows.
They would sometimes walk up to 15 miles a day just so he could catch, study, and catalog rare species of butterflies and moths. He famously said that the pleasures of scientific discovery in the field far exceeded the pleasures of literary creation.
If the weather was terrible, he would spend this time at a microscope in his hotel suite, dissecting and examining the genitalia of the butterflies he had already caught to classify them.
3. The 6:30 PM Wind-Down
By late afternoon/early evening, he would head back to the hotel. He allowed himself a short nap to recharge, followed by a bath.
At 6:30 PM, he would have a drink (usually a glass of Scotch or Swiss wine) and review the work he had done that morning. He used this time to tweak sentences and mentally prepare the "crossword puzzle" of index cards he would tackle the next morning.
After dinner in the hotel dining room, the evening belonged to games. He and Véra were highly competitive. They would spend an hour or two playing chess (Nabokov actually composed complex chess problems for fun) or playing a custom version of Scrabble using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, where he routinely put up massive scores of over 500 points.
By 9:00 PM, he was usually in bed, reading other people's books until he fell asleep—only to wake up at 6:00 AM and do the exact same thing again.
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>>25328964
>he preferred to sit upright in bed and write on index cards
presumably while stroking it, horny by his own words>>25329019
because that was fuel for his bed-ridden work state