Writers' Routines

Rejection

Mr. Nimoy wishes you good luck with your blog and he thanks you for your interest, but his routine varies greatly and he is unable to comply. 

Eckhart Tolle

“A summary of how Eckhart Tolle writes: 

1. Stillness

2. Awareness of thoughts as they arise

3. Write, or if the thought is not relevant or useful, wait in stillness for the next one” 

(Source: thechangeblog.com)

David Lynch

For seven years in the 1980s he ate lunch at Bob’s Big Boy every day, which consisted of cup after cup of coffee and a single chocolate milkshake while scribbling notes on Bob’s napkins. He arrived at Bob’s at precisely 2:30 p.m. each day.  The reason: “If you go earlier, at lunchtime, they’re making a lot of chocolate milkshakes. The mixture has to cool in a machine, but if it doesn’t sit in there long enough, it’s runny,” he said. “At 2:30, you’ve got a chance for it to be just great.” Only 3 perfect milkshakes out of more than 2,500.  

“The coffee and the sugar would really get me going. And I would try to catch ideas.” (He doesn’t eat sugar anymore). Mapped out, at least in part, on Bob’s napkins–was Blue Velvet.

(Source: thecityofabsurdity.com)

K. Silem Mohammad

Get up, shower, walk to work, buy coffee and breakfast, check email and Facebook, prep for class, teach, hold office hours, banter with colleagues in copy machine room, teach some more, answer emails, look at Facebook, go home (stop at grocery on the way), fix dinner, pour glass of wine, watch shows, talk to girlfriend, check email and Facebook, peer into chasm of own existence, recoil, lose consciousness.

(Source: lime-tree.blogspot.com)

Leo Babauta (Zenhabits.net)

I wake with a cup of coffee and read. Then I write something — a blog post, a book chapter. That’s my main work for the day. Once that’s done, I take care of smaller things like email and administrative details. Then I take care of my body — I do some kind of workout. Lastly, I spend time with my family.

(Source: zenhabits.net)

Haruki Murakami

For him that means waking between 4 & 5am to write. After about 5-hours in front of the keyboard (writing or no writing) he runs 10 km. And after that he spends a couple of hours in a record shop thumbing through the jazz section for rare vinyl. Next, he has some free time for hobbies. For him it might be swimming some laps. Then it’s back to his office for a few hours of translating his favorite American novels into Japanese or catching up on reading before turning in at 9pm.

Even he admits this is difficult. It is a schedule he strictly maintains while writing novels. Six months of this routine for a first draft, then a couple months off. Then he’s back rewriting for a couple months. One more month off and he comes back for the final edits.

(Source: weputwordsonpaper.com)

Ian Fleming (James Bond novels)

“In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.” -Sebastian Faulks  

(Source: sebastianfaulks.com)

Ben Fountain

“He had tried to write when he came home at night from work, but usually he was too tired to do much. He decided to quit his job.  He began his new life on a February morning—a Monday. He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30 A.M. He made a plan. Every day, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours. He was a lawyer. He had discipline….Ben could start writing at seven-thirty in the morning because Sharie [his wife] took their son to day care. He stopped working in the afternoon because that was when he had to pick him up, and then he did the shopping and the household chores. In 1989, they had a second child, a daughter. Fountain was a full-fledged North Dallas stay-at-home dad….Sharie was Ben’s wife. But she was also—to borrow a term from long ago—his patron.” -Malcolm Gladwell 

(Source: gladwell.com)

Tao Lin

“In the morning, he said, his meal is small, usually including iced coffee, organic fruit, or ‘green juice.’ Then he goes to New York University’s Bobst Library, where he writes for five hours, which, judging by his public web activity, includes a large amount of tweeting and Facebooking. During the rest of the time, Lin said, he’s mostly online in his apartment….I began to think, Here is someone devoted to his work.” -Daniel B. Roberts, 

(Source: themorningnews.org)