After watching Jack Nicklaus win the 1965 Masters, the legendary golfer Robert Jones said, “Nicklaus played a game with which I’m not familiar.” As a guy who’s made a living by writing, I sometimes experience a writer whose extraordinary talent brings Robert Jones’ observation to mind.

Anthony Doerr, a Bowdoin graduate who wrote “All The Light We Cannot See,” is one such writer. If you haven’t read his Pulitzer Prize winning novel about two teenagers in World War II, read it. And also read Doerr’s recounting of the year he spent in Rome with his wife and twin infant sons while working on the aforementioned novel which would become a best seller. The Rome book is entitled, “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the World.”

A passage from Doerr’s book about the year in Rome gives his take on good writing. “And doesn’t the writer do the same thing? Isn’t she knitting together scraps of dreams? She hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; she builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe.”

Donna Tarrt, who wrote “The Goldfinch: A Novel,” another Pulitzer Prize winner, also falls into the “unfamiliar game” category. She keeps you going for over 700 pages in this tale of a young man who survives a terrorist bombing in an art museum in which his beloved mother dies. Tarrt, who spent 10 years writing this book, says of the writing process: “Staying with the same characters for so long is fun, it’s fun seeing how they endure over time, being in the same world for a long time. Once I’m there I like to stay there. It’s an alternate life, it’s wonderful. Of course it’s escapist.”

Pat Conroy, another one of my writing heroes, died in March, 2016. During one interview, he explained why he wrote. “My well used dictionaries and thesauri sing out to me when I write, and all English words are the plainsong of my many-tongued, long-winded ancestors who spoke before me … .In “The Great Santini” it was — why did I hate my father? In “The Lords of Discipline” — why I hated the plebe system. In “the Prince of Tides” — why did my sister go crazy?

I highly recommend the book, “Pat Conroy, a Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life,” which came out posthumously. You will get a good sense of the man who wrestled with his demons by writing. You will also learn that he was amazingly gregarious, spending hours chatting with fans during book signings and asking everyone he encountered — even, say, taxi drivers — to “Tell me a story about your life!”

These three extraordinary writers are not paint-by-the-numbers hacks, cranking out a book a year to satisfy their ravenous fans. Rather, they each connect with the heart as well as the mind. I’m not familiar with the game they’re playing, but I’m sure glad they’re playing it!

(NOTE: If you’re interested in how great writers work, I highly recommend: “The World is My Home,” by James Michener; “On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft,” by Stephen King; and “Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” by Annie Lamott.)

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary or suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns. [email protected].