How do famous authors write

Too early. My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. So getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else. I would circle the best ideas and then put them in order at 1am for an attempt at synthesis.

The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down…I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come…And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular…Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process.

For me, light is the signal in the transition. It enables me, in some sense. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for m or do both , then I read a bit and listen to some music.

I go to bed at pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. What they have worked out is this: I awake at , work until , eat breakfast at home, work until , walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at , read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare.

There are loads of bars, though. I always have a pad on my bedside, in case I want to write straight away. I also have a habit at night of leaving a sentence unfinished, so I can pick up on it the next morning. If the mood is upon me, I tend to write nonstop.

I then usually go for a walk. My father opened the store at 6 A. He closed it at 1 A. With lots of space for existing outside of writing and large meal breaks, I'd do this exact routine again with no complaints. Murakami's routine usually looks like this :. By the time I hauled myself out of bed and sat down to write, it was a.

My stomach flipped from lack of sleep and even my dog was too tired to do anything other than follow me to the next room and flop back to bed. I warmed up by working on a sample for another project before making breakfast and dragging my elderly dog out for an early walk. I dug into my book manuscript around 7 a.

I hit a massive plot snag about an hour in, but was relieved at how much time I'd left in the morning to properly sort it out.

The solitude was perfect for problem-solving. I'm not a runner and I refuse to become one, so I put together a walking route around a park nearby.

Between my afternoon walk and morning dog time, I hit 10K for the day. This was surprisingly relaxing. After spending all week staring at words, it was nice to look at the sky, listen to music, and let my brain turn off for an hour or so. I tried to listen to music and read when I came home, but I conked out for a two-hour nap. You win some, you lose some. I saved the "Sandman" author for last because he's the only writer on this list without a published strict schedule, and I needed to sleep in after pretending to be Murakami.

So, I tried it. Since I hate sitting and doing nothing, I absolutely wrote during the time I'd allotted for myself. I sat on my back porch with a cup of coffee, dog in the sunny spot next to me, and scratched and scribbled for a while. I had to swap out for a ballpoint pen about halfway through as my Daiso fountain pen dried up.

I could see the allure of using a flourishy, messy pen for a first draft. I felt like a writer, and I was far less concerned with word count than I was with getting the story down. After a full week of trying other author's routines, I see that replicating other's success exactly isn't going to work for me.

These writers do what works for them. And then they keep doing it every day. So I have to find my own version of the perfect writing routine. I will most likely keep Schwab's minute word sprints, Murakami's afternoon exercise, and the popular morning writing block. I'll never turn down the opportunity for whiskey during working hours, but I won't be locking myself in an empty room or writing every word by hand.

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