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Ever wondered what famous, award-winning authors actually do when they sit down to write? I studied the writing routines of five iconic authors to figure out how we can learn from their writing techniques and use them to improve our own practice — so buckle up and get ready to take your writing routine to a professional level. Make sure you read all the way to the end where I talk about the writing routine of one of my favorite authors of all time.

1. Barbara Kingsolver’s Writing Routine

First up is Barbara Kingsolver. You know Barbara Kingsolver as the Pitzer prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead as well as The Poisonwood Bible and other numerous New York Times best-selling works of fiction, essays, and poetry collections.

In a 2012 Interview With The Daily Beast, she shared some details of her writing routine:

I tend to wake up very early. Too early. Four o’clock is standard. My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it’s because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. So getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency. It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
I write a lot of material that I know I’ll throw away. It’s just part of the process. I have to write hundreds of pages before I get to page one….For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of. That’s probably why I get up so early and have writing time in the quiet dawn hours, when no one needs me.

In the interview, Barbara talks about being a mother the entire time that she has also been a novelist, so she's always had to balance the two. Most working authors have to balance writing time with other obligations, whether they are work-related or family-related, so I love that her writing routine revolves around creating a safe space and time for writing that she honors and finds precious. For her, that works in the early morning hours, before her family gets up and starts needing things from her, but you could take the same concept and apply it to any time in your day that works with your schedule.

Another part of her writing routine that really really resonates with me is the idea of putting a lot down on the page, knowing that much of it is not going to make it into the final story. As a developmental editor, I am constantly talking with authors about the value of editing ruthlessly and how sometimes you need to “kill your darlings.”

Barbara talks about how she puts a lot of material down on the page even knowing that much of it is not going to make it into her final draft — a lot of it is exploratory writing, the process of her actually finding and discovering and developing the story she wants to tell. Remember that no work is ever wasted — even the work that you end up cutting, you still had to do that work to develop the story and make it what it currently is.

2. Stephen King’s Writing Routine

Now let's talk about the writing routine of one of the most influential and widely known authors of our time: Stephen King. Over the years, he has offered us a lot of insight into his personal writing practice and tons of tricks and techniques that authors who are interested in developing their craft can leverage. Here's a quote where he talks about his writing routine from Lisa Rogak’s 2009 book, Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King:

There are certain things I do if I sit down to write. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places…The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.

Stephen King is also known to talk about setting daily page count goals that he strictly adheres to. His writing ritual centers around the importance of consistency: he tries to sit down at the same time every morning, at the same desk, with all of his things arranged in the same way, and his same cup of water or tea. Having a routine like this can signal to your brain that it's time to switch into writing mode and make it easy to slip into that creative flow.

Many authors do find it helpful to set a specific goal for when they sit down to write, whether that's a specific number of words or just a set amount of time you want to spend writing — but remember, you don't have to do this every single day if it doesn't work for your schedule. Even if your routine is only three times a week, that can still be super helpful in maintaining consistency and helping you make progress. And you don't have to have a super lofty goal of what you want to produce out of your writing sessions, either — even a goal of a single page or a few hundred words or even 15 minutes of writing time can go a long way toward helping you make progress.

The key here is not the volume of writing that you produce, but the consistency in which you do it. Prioritize what is realistic and what you can actually sustain over a long period of time, first and foremost, and once you build up a consistent practice, you can experiment with what goals make sense for you.

3. Tomi Adeyemi’s Writing Routine

Now let's talk about the writing routine of Tomi Adeyemi, one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People and the Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of Children of Blood and Bone. In a 2019 interview published in Nylon magazine, she talked about her writing habits and rituals:

Right now, my writing ritual consists of timers, accents, and Thai food. I use timers to write for 20 minutes straight, and then use timers to take a five-to-10 minute break. This helps me to "reset" my mind and keep the words flowing onto the page. To get inside my characters' heads, I read their chapters aloud in horrible, horrible accents that no human being is ever allowed to hear. And last but certainly not least is Thai food, otherwise known as the great motivator. Rewarding myself with beef pad see ew and spring rolls after a good day's work has carried me through many late nights.

I really love Tomi’s routine because she offers some fun yet practical tricks and techniques that can help you make your writing practice more exciting, and it proves that you don't have to take your writing practice super seriously all the time — even if you're a hugely accomplished author. Remember that this process is supposed to be fun and enjoyable first and foremost.

She uses a timer to break up her writing time into more manageable chunks with breaks in between, not dissimilar to the Pomodoro method of productivity. Also, reading your work aloud is one of my very favorite self-editing hacks because it forces you to turn on a different part of your brain and helps you catch awkward phrasing or grammatical issues.

Tomi takes this to another level and adopts different accents for each of her characters, which can help you hear your character's voice and then bring that onto the page. And finally, setting up small rewards for yourself once you complete a session of writing — whether that's your favorite dessert or your favorite takeout meal — can go a long way to helping you reach the finish line. I know that I feel so much more motivated to complete a task if I know that there's a treat waiting for me on the other side of it.

4. Haruki Murakami’s Writing Routine

Now let's learn from the writing routine of Haruki Murakami, the internationally best-selling author of Norwegian Wood and IQ84. In an interview with the Paris Review in 2004, he described his writing routine and said:

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Haruki's routine echoes some of what Stephen King was saying in adopting a consistent practice that allows you to really get into the zone. He highlights how committing and consistently showing up to your writing practice creates almost a mesmerizing, hypnotic state that allows you to produce your best creative work. If you stick with a routine for long enough, writing won't be something you have to force yourself to do but will become an ingrained habit.

Something interesting that Haruki raises is that it takes a lot of mental and physical stamina to complete a project as long as a book. He even compares it to survival training in the amount of discipline and mental acuity it requires. So, if you train yourself mentally and physically, you'll be much better equipped to go through this long and sometimes arduous process.

To that end, for Haruki, it's helpful to build up his physical strength as he is working through his creative project, and he dedicates time daily to intense exercise. It won't, of course, work for every writer to incorporate intense physical training while they are also trying to carve out time to write, but even gentle movement breaks like taking a walk outside in the middle of your writing session can work wonders for your creativity and help you maintain that clear head space. Many authors talk about how taking a walk or doing a quick meditation or yoga session helps them get through writer's block.

5. Joan Didion’s Writing Routine

And finally, now let's talk about the writing routine of one of my favorite authors of all time: Joan Didion. She won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and is best known for her novels, essay collections, and memoirs, including The Year of Magical Thinking and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. In an interview with The Paris Review back in 1978, she said:

I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I’m really working I don’t like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don’t have the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I’m in low spirits. Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it.

Joan’s routine breaks one of the most commonly touted writing “rules,” which is that you shouldn't edit as you write. Many writers say you should silence that editor brain and just focus on getting the words out to start, but Joan didn't do that; she reviewed all the work that she wrote at the end of the day, in the evening once she'd had a few hours in between her writing session and her review session, so that she could start the next day with fairly clean pages to work with. So, if revising and reviewing your work as you go works better for your personal process, by all means, go with it.

Joan also emphasized the importance of protecting her writing and reviewing time — she would decline dinner invitations so that she could spend that time with her work. This is a good reminder to prioritize your writing time and set boundaries where you need to.

I was super intrigued by this concept of her having a drink to “remove herself from the pages” — I think the takeaway here is that she employed a practice that helped her switch from writing to editing mode and allowed her to look at the pages with a fresh eye, which can be so, so hard to do when you are so deep in the story. For her, having a drink allowed her to enter a different headspace, but that could be anything — having a cup of tea, moving to a different physical space, or putting on a certain type of music.

And lastly, the idea of staying physically close to the book overnight is a really interesting one. She said that she would sleep in the same room as the book whenever she was working on it. I think this speaks to the idea of letting the story simmer in the back of your unconscious mind while you're not necessarily actively thinking about writing or actively sitting down to write. Since most of us write on our computers, we might already be unknowingly sleeping next to our book every night.

So, which which of these authors's writing routines most resonated with you? Which of their techniques do you want to try to adopt in your own practice?

Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!