Name: Benjamin Spall

Claim to fame: Creator of the website My Morning Routine and author of a book by the same name My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired.

Where to find him: On Twitter, Amazon, and his blog

Let’s start with the basics: What time of day do you start writing? Is it easier for you to write early in the morning? Late at night?

I always schedule my writing for first thing in the morning (not first thing upon waking, but the first work task I’ll do on any given day). It’s hard to resist the pull of checking my inbox before I start, and sometimes I succumb, but I’ve found that I consistently produce my best work in the morning, so that’s when I schedule it in.

With that said, I can write throughout the day when needs must, but when I’m writing an article or something for a book at, say, 3:00 in the afternoon, there’s a good chance that I’ve already done extensive work outlining that I intend to write, so the actual writing itself is more of an exercise in making connections between my meandering thoughts than it is blank-page fingertips-to-keyboard writing.

One thing I’ll consistently do when writing something short, such as an article, is sit on it overnight. (This is especially useful for something I write in the afternoon.) I always come at it with fresh eyes the next day, with this often resulting in me cutting a lot of it. With books, I need much longer than one night away from it for the fresh eyes effect to take hold.

Do you listen to music when you write, or do you prefer silence, or something else on in the background?

I tend to listen to classical music while I’m writing; anything that’s flowing and doesn’t have lyrics. Philip Glass, Abel Korzeniowski, and Max Richer are some of my favorite composers for this.

If I’m simply outlining I may listen to something more upbeat, or if I’m working from my local coffee shop (that has shocking excellent taste in music, and like to play it loud) I’m happy to go without headphones and listen to what they’re playing until I need to put my head down and fully concentrate again.

What’s the best money/investment you have ever spent or made as a writer?

I recently bought a small analogue timer that I take with me everywhere and I use to time myself when I’m doing particular tasks. Don’t get me wrong, the alarm is excruciatingly annoying (it has a silent setting for when you’re in a public place), but what it’s great at is visually showing time slipping away. I guess you would call it somewhat morbid in that respect, and I don’t always use it (I’m not using it right now), but it’s very helpful when I have something I need to race through, or if, for example, I want to give myself just 10-15 minutes to sort through my email inbox.

You’ve interviewed hundreds of talented creatives and business people for your website and book by the same name, My Morning Routine. What was the most common writing routine amongst all your interviews? What habits generally have you adopted after learning them from one of your featured routines?

The most common habit among the writers we’ve interviewed is to write early. While there are night owls among us, the majority of us do our best writing, if not our only writing, early in the morning. (As Ryan Holiday noted in his interview with us, “I shower, get ready, and head downstairs to my office/library to sit and write. The way I see it, after a productive morning in which I accomplish my big things, the rest of the day can be played by ear. It’s all extra from there.”)

Another habit that came up time and again, and one I’ve personally adopted, is reducing the distractions around you, both on and offline, before you begin writing. This includes physically tidying up your desk so it’s clean and there’s nothing on it that will distract you, as well as closing (and if you want to go further, blocking) social media and other distracting websites so when it’s time to sit down to write, it’s just you and the blinking cursor.

You have a co-author for your new book. How did you two go about dividing the work that needed to be done? Was this harder or easier than expected? Any advice to those who are thinking of writing a book with someone else?

This was actually fairly easy as of the two of us I’m the only native English speaker, so I would write a draft (or part of a draft), and then send it to my co-author Michael, who is German, and he would send it back to me with edits, suggestions, and general insights into how he feels the writing may be perceived compared to how he believes I intended it.

Michael’s English is excellent and he would have had no problem writing a book on his own, but this is how we decided to divide up the task. (We were both responsible for reaching out to and conducting interviews with people for the book; which resulted in many hundreds of emails each!)

Outside of your book and website, you write at benjaminspall.com and elsewhere. How many words a day do you produce, or try to produce? How much of that ever sees the light of day?

I went through a period a few months back of writing and publishing on my personal site every day. This was a great process to help lubricate my writing muscles as I was deep into editing mode at this point, so few “new words” were being written on a regular basis. However I stopped this after a few weeks because the time it took each day aside, I figured it would be more useful for my readers to hear from me less often (once a week is the goal) with more thought-out content.

I’ve never had a words-per-day goal, but whether I’m working on a book or an article I always have a goal surrounding how much I want to accomplish in a specific timeframe (often in the mornings, but not always). And while I don’t typically trash full chapters or articles, my work can often go in a very different direction from what the outline suggested, which invariably results in parts being thrown away, or collected together elsewhere if it has a hint of future usefulness to it.

Do you have a different approach for your blogs and books, or does it all follow roughly the same process?

They all follow the same process, with outlining being at the core of each. I’m rubbish at just sitting down and typing out my thoughts on a certain topic without already having an outline in place to tell me where I should be going. I need that structure in order to enjoy the writing process and to get clever with the words or turns of phrases I decide to use. Without it I’m lost.

For this reason structuring is often a daunting process and I strangely tend to procrastinate more when I’m structuring than when I’m actually writing. As noted, once a piece of writing is finished I’ll wait until the next day (preferably the morning) to edit it.

Do you have any favorite books or books that have influenced you about writing or the creative process?

I do! Stephen King’s On Writing is great. I read it years ago and listened to the audiobook recently to jog my memory on some of his tips. I’d heard of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott for much too long before I eventually sat down to read it. It’s beautifully written, full of great advice, and well worth the hype.

I also enjoyed Victor O. Schwab’s How to Write a Good Advertisement. It’s not about book or article writing per se, but it’s a great read.