Developing a Healthy Writing Routine: A Lesson from my Favourite Authors

Being inspired by some of the greats, I’m currently re-establishing my daily writing norm around my various challenges. By learning how others developed a real stickability to their daily writing routine, I’m hoping to become a little more ordered each day.

Currently, while I do write every day, the compulsion is firmly in place, I don’t plan. I don’t prepare. I just sit and write while the distractions of my health, visitors, chores and snacks get in the way. I never know how long I'll write for and if I'll even hit my daily quota!


This is partly down to the fact that I no longer have a full time teaching job to work around. Up until three years ago I got up every morning at 6.00 and wrote for an hour then wrote 7.00-9.00 every night. I’d done that for years and it really worked. At weekends I wrote around meet ups with friends I usually sat at my desk, then later on dining table with only the gentle distractions of my boys here and there. They even sat and did homework while I wrote for a while.
But now my challenges are different. And so I’ve been researching some of my favourite authors to help me develop a routine with reasonable adjustments (as I would in a workplace!) so that my health doesn’t get in the way of my writing!

Let's see how some of the greats tackled this issue. I read somewhere that establishing a routine even when writing is difficult is a little like working those muscles, the more you do it, the easier it will get. My brain performs better well exercised and with some preparation.

1. John Steinbeck

 In 1962, John Steinbeck wrote to his friend outlining his six best strategies for keeping a writing routine in place and to “keep from going nuts.”

Now let me give you the benefit of my experience in facing 400 pages of blank stock — the appalling stuff that must be filled. I know that no one really wants the benefit of anyone’s experience which is probably why it is so freely offered. But the following are some of the things I have had to do to keep from going nuts.

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day; it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theatre, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it — bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue — say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

February, 1962

— From a letter to Robert Wallsten,

2. Stephen King

 Now, Stephen King is a powerhouse of a writer - if only I had his stamina! He pretty much writes all day every day through a working week - and probably more besides.

"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,” he explained. “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.”

- Lisa Rogak, Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King

3. Susan Sontag, 

This critical essayist, novelist and writer of ‘On Photography,’ shared her private resolutions in 1977 that helped her stick to her daily writing habits.

Starting tomorrow — if not today:

I will get up every morning no later than eight. (Can break this rule once a week.) 

I will have lunch only with Roger [Straus]. (‘No, I don’t go out for lunch.’ Can break this rule once every two weeks. 

I will write in the Notebook every day. (Model: Lichtenberg’s Waste Books.) 

I will tell people not to call in the morning, or not answer the phone. 

I will try to confine my reading to the evening. (I read too much — as an escape from writing.) 

I will answer letters once a week. (Friday? — I have to go to the hospital anyway.)

4. Henry Miller 

Henry Miller, the famous writer and playwright, revealed what he called his 'Eleven Commandments' that helped him stick to his work schedule and daily routine for many years

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it — but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

(Source: Henry Miller On Writing)

5. Maya Angelou 

The prolific writer, poet, civil rights activist and award-winning author, is well known for her acclaimed memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In the audiobook, Daily Rituals, Maya Angelou described her daily routine showing true diligence - certainly something for me to work towards.

I usually get up at about 5:30, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine.I keep a hotel room in which I do my work — a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7.00, and I work until 2 in the afternoon.If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvellous. I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2.00, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind.I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, I’m not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner I’ll read to him what I’ve written that day. He doesn’t comment. I don’t invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning.

6. Margaret Atwood

Now, one of my all time favourite writers is now going to throw a spanner in my theory that all writers need a routine!
In a famous New Yorker article, Atwood shared the secret of her productivity and gave us a glimmer of how she had come to be the author of over sixty novels, children fiction, articles. With no morning routine, no special place for writing or magical rituals, she has no special place or time for her writing each day. She revealed that she simply sits down and writes, wherever she is, with whatever she's got. Presenting the scribbled-upon palm of her hand to the journalist, she remarked:

'When all else fails, you do have a surface you can write on.'

I concur. EB White, author of Charlottes Web, generally wrote at a table in his living room while his children hurtled around him. I've been there too!

Indeed, while my rather scattergun writing approach requires an overhaul, I do hate to be driven by rules and schedules. A loosely outlined writing routine helps me, not only for getting my quota of words down or working on prep etc, but giving me peace of mind and ticking a few boxes in terms of creativity, productivity and general well being. Yet I do carry a selection of notebooks to strike while the iron's hot - wherever that may be. I have been spotted by a waterfall, in a corner of a gig, in numourous coffee shops, scribbling words and phrases, and my friends are used to me jotting things down on my hand, napkins, post-it nots and even on my phone as events occur or inspire me.

My favourite authors' routines all have to include daily writing and word targets - both of which have been essential for me in the past. By adjusting and refining my old methods I hope to find a smoother way forward or at least daily promise to myself.

1. Write every day.

For me, I write in the morning once the boys have gone to school. I then tend to write in the evenings too from once all things are ready for the next day. I also find that I write out and about in one of my trusted notebooks as inspiration strikes. 

2. Create the day’s To Do List and prioritise which writing must happen first.

I write two key areas each week. My blog and my fiction. I manage a few social media pages too and need to prep and schedule posts in the evening spending minimal time each morning preparing those. By preparing a list for each day again in my diary of writing and daily tasks this will provide a loose structure to work within and serves my terrible memory well!

3. Physically prepare myself for my sessions: food, drink, pain relief, comfort.

Since my health changes, at home I write from the sofa which allows me to write for longer each session as I can lounge about on there and stay comfortable for longer. I do prepare with caffeine but really need to eat breakfast before I start! If I'm not careful I get ravenous about 11.00 and that affects my writing.

4. Take regular breaks.

I definitely need to do this and will break every thirty minutes for a brain break and to move a little - or oil my joints as my physio told me - and probably make a cuppa or sit outside just for five minutes or so. Charles Dickens famously went for a three hour walk every afternoon and while I'm not advocating that, I must be outside a little each day.

5. Create a daily quota to meet each day.

My blog is completed over a few days each week usually and I will now also aim for 1000 words of whichever fiction I'm embroiled in each day - my latest novel is rather stubbornly stuck at 21,000 words and has been for some time. Must try harder! The one constant in all the authors' routines or strategies above is that they all write every day without fail. Not writing each day feels strange. They set aside other distractions and focus down consistently until they have got where they want to be by the close of day.
While this is health-dependant, if I aim for approx 250 words every half hour and plan not to re-read and delete too much while working on my first draft or blog post I'm optimistic daily output will improve. 
Watch this space.