Against Routine: On Writing Habits of Famous Authors

Does a writing habit actually shape how creative and efficient our writing will be? For a while, I tried incorporating the Artist’s Way into my routine and writing in stream of consciousness, but it felt more like journaling a therapy session every morning. And the truth is, as a non-morning person, my brain can’t function properly before 11am. I am more of a night owl, and so are many authors. Balzac would drink 50 cups of coffee a day and famously would write from 1am to 7am. Maya Angelou was an adept of an early rise, whereas Nabokov loved a midday writing session. Mine resembles more of Kafka’s: extreme and nocturnal.  

Ritualised entry points supposedly set a schedule that lowers the ‘blank‑page’ barrier, allowing the mind to enter a flow state. The isolation of the voice, meaning ignoring external prose, preserves an authentic tone, encouraging bold, original expression.  As someone who is wildly not made for routines, doing work on a whim and going from one extreme to another, this idea terrifies me. Incorporating some of this advice into my routine made me believe for a while that I did not have an ounce of creativity in me and that I was just supposed to consume art as a reader. Stephen King’s On Writing helped me get out of this mindset, as he likens writing to telepathy, a direct transfer of ideas from one mind to another across time and space. This emphasises the intimate connection between writer and reader. 

A lot of creative media platforms pressure you to write meticulously with drafts and self-editing. Setting goals for writing a bigger work is not always a means to an end. Living through our habits, writing on a whim, and typing like you are being chased are the best ways for you to free yourself from the fear of not producing anything creative. 

 I actually hate the idea of setting a time window and warming up with morning pages. It just feels like a chore that I have to do, similar to writing an essay that does not spark my interest. Humanities students spend most of our days (perhaps six to eight hours during exam season) in the library aimlessly writing on a computer. That definitely shapes our relationship with creativity and finding our own personal narrative voice. Dedicating time to writing is a privilege, even if you can squeeze in a few minutes. 

I like to think that writing habits are contingent on certain seasons. On a cold fall day, I love to sit down near the cemetery by East Sands and look at the fog; on a sunny day, I rest in my little front garden by my front door. I’ve tried drinking a glass or two of wine late at night, still tipsy from a night out, writing on scraps of paper and in a nice notebook. I came to the conclusion that I need to write in diverse spaces and have background noise, whether it is music or the sound of the rain. There are days I can't write, and my patience slowly erodes (so does my confidence in my writing abilities, and that is ok). I think part of that frustration is due to how we look at fictional writers portrayed in films, as they always seem to have a leitmotif of having a sudden sense of inspiration based upon a particular event of the day and words seamlessly flow (Carrie Bradshaw, for instance). 

Would most of these writers actually enjoy their posthumous works to be published in this way? A writing routine is an opening to someone's soul and a connection to their most inner parts. I read an article about Joan Didion’s writing habits. She said she spent “most of the day working on a piece not actually putting anything on paper, just sitting there, trying to form a coherent idea and then maybe something will come to [her] about five in the afternoon and then [she’ll] work for a couple of hours and get three or four sentences, maybe a paragraph.” She kept a small, windowless room and entered it each morning “as if punching a time clock,” a ritual that turned dread into focus and insulated her from distraction. While drafting, she deliberately avoided other novels, fearing their rhythm would invade her own “dream” of prose. She recorded every observation, from a “dirty crepe‑de‑Chine wrapper” to the light on a pear tree; later she mined these fragments for texture, metaphor, and narrative momentum. After each day’s output, she rewrote the pages the next morning, using a drink to create emotional distance; this forced constant revision and revealed hidden connections. She layered recurring details through detail, rhythm, repetition, and musical phrasing, turning mundane facts into a symphonic texture that fuels imagination. 

I saw a Substack post that claimed that you should make your day job serve your art, and not think a job or studying will pay for your side hustle of writing. My inner child, who always dreamt of becoming a writer, collecting scraps of paper and napkins of stories that came to my mind, would probably agree with this.

Image from Wikimedia Commons