How to Be a Novelist, 1901
Most authors indulge in little eccentricities when working, and, if the time should ever come that your name is brought before the public notice, it would be advisable to develop some whimsical habit so as to be prepared for the interviewer, who is sure to ask whether you have one. To push your pen through your hair during creative moments would be a good plan; it would reveal a line of baldness where you had furrowed the hair off, and afford ocular proof to all and sundry that you possessed a genuine eccentricity. Or if you prefer a habit still more bizarre, you might put a hammock in a tree, and always write your most exciting scenes during a rain-storm, and under the shelter of a dripping umbrella.
How to Write a Novel: A Practical Guide to the Art of Fiction
Characters? Check. Plot? Check. Charmingly grotesque neurosis? Check.
Ah, the marvelous whimsy of compulsively depilating oneself. Where are my eyebrows, did you say? Well, look no further than my Pulitzer Prize for your answer!
You have to have an eccentricity, otherwise you aren't really creative. Would you really trust someone to entertain you if they wouldn't go to bizarre and potentially self-harmful lengths to produce said entertainment?
Never trust a well-coiffed artist, that's my motto.
I hear the Pulitzer juries take into account degree of depilation.