These 13 Authors Have the Best Writing Routines

Get the best results for the time you have

A few months ago I fell into a writing slump that I couldn’t pull myself out of. None of the usual methods were working. Not walking, not reading, not forcing myself to sit down and just do it.

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I read that quote during my slump and pulled myself together enough to decide that if Stephen King could do it, so could I.

I just needed to write as Stephen King did. And if I was going to try his methods, why not research a few other proficient writers and try their routines too?

The rules:

• Stick to the routine as closely as possible.
• Spend only one week on each routine so that the novelty doesn’t wear off.
• Write every day.

Here are the thirteen routines that worked best.

Stephen King

• Wake up. Eat breakfast. Walk three and a half miles (5,6 km). Then find a secluded place to write.
• Open the draft document at the last good page/section. Read it. Revise it. Put yourself back into the writing mindset.
• Listens to one song on a loop for each story.
• Write until you reach 2,000 (about four hours, sometimes more, sometimes less).
• Go back, revise some of it, and decide what section to start with tomorrow.

Ursula Le Guin

• 5:30 – wake up, lie there, and think.
• 6:15 – get up and eat a big breakfast.
• 7.15 – get to work writing.
• Noon — lunch.
• 13:00 –15:00 — read, listen to music.
• 15:00 –17:00 — correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
• 17:00 – 20:00 — make dinner and eat.
• After 20:00 — “I tend to be very stupid and we won’t talk about it.”

Neil Gaiman

• Morning — get up, do emails, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies.
• 13:00 –18:00 — write longhand, away from the computer.
• Use two fountain pens with two different coloured inks, changing pen each day (it lets you see at a glance how much work you do each day).
• Keep a second project at hand in case blocks happen with the first.
• Finish everything you start.
• You have permission not to write, but you aren’t allowed to move or do anything else. Eventually, you’ll start writing to alleviate the boredom.

Maya Angelou

• 5:30 — get up.
• 6:30 — find a tiny, empty room in which to write (she uses hotel rooms).
• 7:00 –14:00 — write by hand.
• If the writing goes badly, keep at it only until 12:30. If it goes well, stay as long as it’s going well.
• Edit while you work
• 14:00 — return to civilisation. Read over what you’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of your mind
• 20:00 — Read what you’ve written that day out loud.

Joseph Heller

• Write for two or three hours in the morning. Aim for three to four handwritten pages.
• Rework those pages for two hours.
• Think about how you can inch along to the next paragraph (small, realistic goal). Think about this as you do other activities.
• Have lunch alone.
• Go back to work in the afternoon (sometimes this means lying down and just thinking about the work all afternoon).
• Go out to dinner with friends to take your mind off writing.

Gillian Flynn

• Write from 23:00 to 3:00 (to feel as if you have the world to yourself).
• Threaten yourself like a recalcitrant child. “You will sit in this chair and you will not move until you get this scene written.”
• Once the scene is complete, reward yourself with a game.

Ocean Vuong

• Let the work stew in your brain for as long as possible before writing it down.
• Write at night with a bowl of fruits to snack on.
• Write by hand.
• If you feel stuck, turn off the lights and lie on the floor. Trust your intuition. Something in you tells you that you can’t move beyond this point. Maybe the character isn’t right, the scene isn’t set, it feels false, the metaphor is clunky . . . Stepping away and thinking is the best solution.

Toni Morrison:

• Wake early, drink coffee, watch the sun rise, write (longhand, then type, then print and mark changes).
• Predawn, weekends, and in between tasks are the best times to write.
• Think about your work whenever your brain isn’t busy. It will solve a lot of your writing problems. Jot down every solution so you don’t forget them.

Dean Koontz

• Write six days a week for ten to eleven hours each day, aiming for five to six pages of finished work on good days, maybe a third of a page on bad days.
• 5:00 — get up, get ready for the day, walk the dog, read the Wall Street Journal.
• 6:30–dinner time — write. Do not go near the internet during this time.

Margaret Atwood

• Start at 10:00 and aim for 1,000 to 2,000 words per day (Atwood generally finishes at about 16:00 but will keep at it if the writing is going well).
• Walking is important for creativity, as is eating with people, and finishing off the day with a soothing murder mystery.

Ernest Hemingway

• Wake at daybreak, stand while writing, write every morning as soon after first light as possible, and keep track of daily word counts on a large chart on the wall.
• Start by reading what you wrote yesterday.
• Write until you hit a spot you’re excited about, where you know exactly what’s going to happen next. Stop there. It gives you somewhere easy to pick up the next day.

Joyce Carol Oates

• 8:30–13:00 — Write longhand.
• If you get stuck, go for a walk somewhere you can be alone with your thoughts.
• Do not revise until the first draft is done.

John Grisham

• Wake up early enough to get a couple of hours of writing done. Aim to produce one page per day.
• Find a small, isolated room in which to write.
• No phones, no internet.

Some of these routines are more pleasant to follow than others (Dean Koontz’s is particularly brutal), but they all give results.

Unless you can write full-time, you’ll have to adapt these schedules to fit your life. Though if you can, try to follow them to the letter at least a day or two.

You can try these methods without sacrificing word count thanks to Rachel Aaron’s method, which you can find here:

The great thing about trying different routines is that you can find elements that work perfectly for you. A lot of my current routine is based on preferences I discovered during this experiment.

Which routine sounds best to you?

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