How the Hell Has Danielle Steel Managed to Write 179 Books?

Steel never set out to be a best-seller. In fact, she was made to feel embarrassed of her success. "I grew up in Europe, where it was not considered polite for a woman to be working, and I was married to two different men who did not like that I worked," she says. "But I was lucky because I could work at home when my kids were asleep." (Steel has nine children.) "It was kind of this invisible thing that I did," she adds. "I never had success as a goal. I had this drive to to write the stories that came to me—and to conquer them. It came from the gut, not from the cash register." Even now Steel still encounters people who are put off by her illustrious career. "About 10 years ago someone asked me, 'Oh, do you have an agent?' I mean, do they think I stand on the street corner and try to sell this stuff?" she says. Or another time at a party, "Someone said to me, 'Are you still writing?' And I wanted to say, 'I guess you don't read The New York Times.'"

With time Steel has been able to own her accomplishments. She remembers that once, at a party, George Hamilton’s then-wife, Alana Stewart, told her, "’It's better to be rich and miserable than poor and miserable."’ There is some truth to that.”(For the record, Steel is not miserable.) But she is uncomfortable talking about money—particularly in terms of business deals and negotiations. "I'm a writer, not a banker. I try to be responsible with [my money], but it's very awkward and I try to be discreet," she says. It's not the money that keeps Steel chained to her desk; it's a real love for the craft. "When a book just flows, I love it. Some of my ideas will start off as mundane, but as I write them they become magical—and I can never predict it. Other times it can feel like dragging an elephant across the room, but I get through it."

Steel struggles with the idea of burnout culture, the "millennial affliction" of being completely exhausted by work and the world. She recounts a conversation with her son and his significant other; both are in their twenties. Her son told her that he never works past a certain time at the office, a model of that elusive work-life balance. At his office, his company offered beer! Video games! Free food! The usual "perks" of a modern workplace. Steel balks at it all. "They expect to have a nice time," she says. “To me your twenties and a good part of your thirties are about working hard so that you have a better quality of life later on. I mean, I never expected that quality of life at 25. I had three jobs at the same time, and after work I wrote. Now it's a promise that it's all going to be fun." Once, Steel visited Amazon headquarters. (Jeff Bezos extended the invitation himself.) "There's a flood of bright young people there," she says. "But they're telling them, 'This is a family, this is fun, you can bring your dog to work.' I left with flea bites on my legs!"

Danielle Steel's latest novel, "Blessing in Disguise," which is out now

Delacorte Press

For all her exhortations, Steels does sometimes fear that she's overemphasized work, wishing she'd "had a little more fun." Now every summer she takes a full week off in the South of France to be with her family. They’ll hang out on the beach; she catches up on her reading. (Steel can't read other books while working on her own, which means she can basically never read other books.) On the rare nights that she finishes work earlier than expected, she'll fit in about an hour or so of television, often Netflix—(Bodyguard is a new favorite, and she calls its star Richard Madden "so cute").