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Writers’ Writing Routines

This article originally appeared on our Substack channel.

Ernest Hemingway was notoriously fond of ice-cold bone-dry martinis. In A Farewell to Arms, the protagonist, Frederic Henry, says of the drink, “I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized.” Nevertheless, Hemingway says he most certainly did not drink while working and added, “I write every morning.”

So at least he was waiting for lunch before beginning his libations.

Writers’ routines are endlessly fascinating. Haruki Murakami, the novelist who wrote a book about writing called, What I think about when I think about running, is at the opposite end of the Hemingway spectrum.

In an interview for The Paris Review, he said:

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometres or swim for fifteen hundred metres (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerise 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.”

But since writers are human beings, real life can get in the way of the perfect daily ritual…

SJ Bennett on dealing with illness

It varies hugely. A perfect day would be sending my 17 year-old off to school, getting on with some yoga upstairs and a coffee in the garden, followed by a few hours in my shed, reviewing yesterday’s chapter and writing 2-3,000 words, before coming in and cooking supper. That happens sometimes and it’s the best ever feeling when it does.

At the moment I’m having an 18-week course of chemotherapy, so the creative time I would spend in the book tends to be spent on self-care. Five years ago, I had 12 weeks of radiotherapy and once it was over I wrote The Windsor Knot in a burst of creativity over the summer. I’m hoping the same will happen this summer with book 5 in the series.

Kiran Millwood-Hargrave on having a baby

I had a baby seven months ago, so my life before feels like a distant memory. So much time! I would spend months just thinking, reading, seeing friends, pottering about. And then a deadline would approach, and I’d sit at my desk and feverishly write, as though possessed, for days, weeks, months, surviving off toast and gnocchi until the draft was written.

Now, who knows? I dream of sitting at my desk and falling into telling a story again, but currently, I feel as though part of my heart lives outside my body and is babbling downstairs. I know it’ll get there, but when I do, I doubt it will be typical.

Peter James on being back-to-front

My whole writing day is back-to-front… It stems from the time when I was first writing novels whilst working full time in film and television as a screen writer and producer, so I had to make my “me time” to write.  My writing day starts at 6pm in the evening, when I mix a large vodka martini, with four olives, put on some music, such as the Kinks or Van Morrison and get into a zone.

I try to ensure that whatever I’m doing, I leave myself time to write 1000 words 6 days a week. Around 8.30pm I finish, have dinner with my wife, Lara – we take it in turns to cook. The next morning, usually after a 4-6 mile run, I will edit what I wrote the night before and expand those 1,000 words into around 1,500. When I’ve done that, I plan my evening’s writing session. I break for lunch around 1.30 and in the afternoons I play tennis or do strength work in the gym or catch up on emails, or do interviews like this one!

Simon Okotie on the joy of beginning in spring

My writing routine is – I don’t write creatively during winter. That’s a fallow period. At the start of March, I will start writing, specifically on Wednesday and Sunday mornings.

Susan Barker on being bohemian

I started writing in Japan at the time I had a full-time job, so I wrote mostly in the evenings and at weekends. At that time I really liked to work in coffee shops: all the people around me in the conversations were Japanese, so I could filter everything out and focus on my writing, but have that lovely hum of background noise. Because I’d just started writing and I was building up stamina to sit and write for an hour, two hours, it was really nice to be out in the world and around people as I was working.

I also used to consume huge amounts of caffeine, coffee, when I was writing and I was a smoker then so I would smoke as well. And I also used to write quite late at night as well, to the early hours at the weekend, like two or three, if I didn’t have to teach the next day. I really enjoyed that sort of lifestyle at the time. It would break me now.

Mary Colson on taking Darwin’s word for it

I try and set myself a word count sometimes. I’ll think, Right, two thousand words before the first coffee. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. If I’m going through a particularly rough patch, or I’m going through a tricky point in a project, I think of Darwin, one of my great heroes who said that “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

When I think of those words of Darwin, I get a slight panic and a sense of…I suppose, guilt and I think, Right, okay, best crack on. So I get the frighteners on me, and I get my head down again. When I get to about two or three thousand words, if I’m really rolling, if it’s all flowing, I keep going, and I can go on for hours at that point.

It is really about getting into that rhythm, and I feel sometimes like a sort of one-woman amateur orchestra, where everyone’s tuning up, but not terribly well, when I first start writing in the day. And gradually we all start becoming more of an ensemble as the day progresses.

Ian Duhig on writing whilst on the bus

I do have a fairly fixed routine, at least as far as the mornings are concerned. It involves some kind of a journey, which may be necessary for a practical reason, but if no practical reasons exist, I’m going to take the journey anyway.

My inspiration for these came from the surrealist artist Tony Earnshaw, who lived near me, who engaged in Dérive: which was defined as “an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings.”

Honestly, it’s just an aimless bus journey, where I sit in the top deck. I do pretty much all my writing on my mobile phone nowadays. I think it has something to do with the scene changing constantly, as with every change I make to a draft, I try to look at it with completely new eyes, and physically being in a new place helps with that process. I may well continue work throughout the day or into the night, but these morning journeys are the core of a successful writing day for me.

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