I Tried Stephen King’s Writing Routine For 30 Days — Here’s What Happened

Stephen King, one of the most prolific writers of our time has a common routine for writing. Known for creating long-series content with a library of over 62 novels and 200 short stories written. His routine may seem straightforward, but I have found that it is much more difficult than Stephen King makes it out to be.

Stephen King works every single day for 4–5 hours straight and tries to accomplish at least 6 pages or 1,000 words of his writing every day.

So, I attempted King’s routine for 30 days, and the outcome was interesting to say the least. I woke up every morning at approximately 7:30am, drank my coffee, had breakfast and went right to my computer and got to work. I would sit at my desk from 9:00am-1:00pm. During this time I would research, write, and write some more. My entire goal from this experiment was to embody Stephen King’s procedural routine of creating content, even when you may not have any fresh ideas.

The Writers Block

There were periods of time in which I would stare at the blank paper on my screen and get frustrated, but like most writers block, it went away with time.

If you are struggling with creating your writing, I encourage you to adopt a routine like Stephen King’s into your life. Writers block is something that everyone will have to deal with in their writing career and although we may not think of Stephen King as the average writer, he does come across writers block from time to time. How does he manage this block and how does this routine get affected by it?

If you are in writers block it is very difficult to even get a sentence onto the page, trust me, we’ve all been there but what Stephen King suggests is that you write with a closed door, literally and figuratively. Meaning that you should go into your space with a clear head and no distractions. You should be able to work until your goal is met and then you can open the door.

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.” — Stephen King

Having a suitable space to work in is one of the largest factors that will affect your writers block. Now this doesn’t mean that your writers block will magically be solved if you close the door of your room, but it is a start in the right direction.

The Outcome

Although I didn’t always create the best writing, it raised a new perspective on how I write. Even if your writing isn’t the best, you can always work to improve upon it. If you don’t have any writing, there isn’t anything you can improve upon. There were days where I struggled to meet my goal, but I always managed to at least stay focused on my writing for 4–5 hours out of my day. At the beginning, this time slot was a very large hurdle for me to get over. After some time I have found that scheduling out time for your writing specifically is something that is necessary if you want to have a full-focus and create great content.

“I have a routine because I think that writing is self-hypnosis and you fall into kind of a trance if you do the same passes over and over” — Stephen King

As Stephen King stated in an interview with CNN, writing can become a trance if you do it routinely. I learned that to be true in my 30 days of adopting King’s routine. The first 2 weeks of my experience were quite difficult. I found it hard to have the writing gears going for 4–5 hours every day and struggled with scheduling such a sizeable chunk of time to write.

Around Day 20 I found myself excited to get up every day and write, thought about my writing more often, and found it easier to write what I was thinking. After time writing became more of a second-hand nature. This is where Stephen King’s routine shines through, once it becomes second-hand nature it is much easier to get to writing.

Would I Recommend This Routine?

In the end, I learned a lot from embodying Stephen King’s routine. I learned that it is much harder to write for 4–5 hours than it seems. After time I found that my writing became much easier and I was able to actually create consistent sentences and my skills evolved.

For a writer who is working to improve upon their writing skills and create more content, I highly suggest this routine. It has worked for Stephen King for decades and will continue to work for writers well into the future. Although it is hard to consistently write, I assure you that with dedicated time and a passion for storytelling you will be able to create steady content.

I leave you with a video that I found quite intriguing. George RR Martin did a discussion panel with Stephen King a few years back and once they were finishing up the discussion, George had a question for Stephen. Many of us have always wondered how Stephen King writes so fast and while many of us may never have the ability to ask him, George took the liberty to question him and this was his response:

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