Writing Routines gets the chance to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists, screenwriters, and communicators to explain how they practice their craft. Writers are unique in that they are willing and excited to share the secrets of the trade. They’ll break down exactly how they go about their work. They share everything about their process because they all know the same thing – every writer is different and no two Writing Routines are the same. There is overlap, of course, but what is endlessly fascinating about the craft of writing is each writer’s craft is different – a specific, individualized method and system. They experiment to eventually find what works best for them. Then it’s rinse and repeat.
Mimicking a writer’s routine with a meticulous exactness may not be effective. They can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be plagiarized. But they can, and should, be revised. Pulling pieces from various writer’s, just like the bestselling writer’s we’ve interviewed have, will help you in shaping your own system.
Be warned, there are many pieces to the puzzle that is a writer’s routine. The time of day they like to write, pre-writing rituals, the music they listen to, books and other writer’s they’re influenced by, and the tools they use to do the work – these are all important components to getting words from the mind to the page. Ah, the page–where the writing actually happens. For literature greats of old, this was perhaps one component that was uniform. However, quill and ink have fallen from favor. We’ve collected what writer’s now favor, where words now find the page. Some prefer analog, others digital. Some need to be offline, others online. Some use waiter’s pads, others require an easel for their pad. Hopefully you can pull what works for you!
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“I use a Mac with Word for Mac. I can’t work with anything else. The intuition built into the Apple lineage is my intuition. Whoever developed that way back when for Mac, it was built for people as computer dumb as me.”
– Steven Kotler, a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist and one of the world’s leading experts on ultimate human performance.
“I use Microsoft Word in part because I see no reason to change, but I probably also use Microsoft Word because I’m being lazy about change. I will say that I think Google Docs are an impediment to productivity. Anything that takes us online runs the risk of diverting our attention”
– Paul Shirley, former professional basketball player and author of Stories I Tell on Dates
“I have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft Word, which I use for all my book and script writing. The View/Outline feature allows me to expand and compress a document or move chapters or snippets of the material around with ease.”
– Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain
“Microsoft Word, I can hardly write by hand anymore, except perhaps a signature when I spend money. Many of my habits are slow to change, and the formatting in Google Docs confuses me when it comes to footnotes and the like.”
– Tyler Cowan, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications
“I use separate Google Docs for each [working chapter] but there comes an important inflection point in my progress, where I begin to combine these independent chapters into one Word Document. I basically go from online writing to offline editing and re-writing.”
– Ryan Holiday, bestselling author, a ghost-writer, a columnist, an essayist, a Grammy-award winning producer, and book marketer
“I tend to use Google Docs for notes, and I do my actual writing in Word. I don’t always write in order, however, so I’ll have a handful of documents going at once. It’s always a good feeling when I can move those smaller sections into the main manuscript.”
– Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”
“I write on a laptop with Word, and express my self-hatred by writing long, research-intensive books. I took my first typing class in ninth grade, and immediately made a habit of typing everything I wrote. Now the keyboard is a more natural tool to me than a pen or pencil.”
– Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
“Scrivener has a set of tools that make long-arc writing projects super easy. I am a non-linear writer, meaning that I often write books from the inside-out, and Scrivener allows me to tackle sections of the book at a time and move them around later instead of having to work through the project in linear fashion. It also helps me stay on track by giving me a daily word count that keeps me on-course for my manuscript target.”
– Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Wordsand Herding Tigers and is the creator and host of The Accidental Creative Podcast
“I use Scrivener for when I’m drafting, because my books have multiple POVs and it’s a bit easier to see how I’m arranging everything with Scrivener. I use Microsoft word once I have the structure of the book down. And I hand-write in between, particularly when I’m struggling to either get into or develop a scene.”
– Sabba Tahir, bestselling author of a YA fantasy series that began with the smash debut hit, An Ember in the Ashes, and was followed by A Torch Against the Night, and A Reaper at the Gates
“For books, I actually start out in Scrivener. I like it because early on, when writing a book, there are so many moving parts and large organizational changes and Scrivener allows you to move massive chunks of text between chapters and sections very quickly and easily. But once the book is organized and maybe the first draft is finished, I move things over to Microsoft Word. It’s just easier and the file formats are universal, so I can send it to friends, my agent or editor, etc.
– Mark Manson, Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck which sold over 1 million copies in 2017 alone.
“I write books in Scrivener because I find it the easiest to jump around and organize ideas without having to incessantly scroll. That’s my style. I jump around a lot, from idea to idea, chapter to chapter. Then I go back and edit it to make it cohesive. I need a tool that satisfies that style of working.”
– Jeff Goins, Bestselling author of five books including Real Artists Don’t Starve and The Art of Work
“Evernote is hands down my most important tool as a writer. I spend a lot of time taking notes and organizing and outlining everything before I get down to composing.”
– Shane Snow, journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Smartcutsand Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart.
“All day long, I capture ideas using the app Drafts. These get dumped into Evernote, where I have a folder full of ideas and prompts for when I’m feeling dry in the creativity department.”
– Jeff Goins, Bestselling author of five books including Real Artists Don’t Starve and The Art of Work
“I took Adam’s advice [from Adam Grant’s Originals] to heart and keep an idea notebook in Evernote for future articles and books. Most of these ideas are useless, but I find that I need to get the shitty ideas out of my head for the gems to emerge.”
– Ozan Varol, tenured law professor, and rocket scientist. He is the author of The Democratic Coup d’État
“I get out one of my quadrille ruled engineering pads and a sharpened Palomino Blackwing pencil (I keep a Staedtler manual pencil sharpener beside me), and I set out three short tasks. One of them is doing a Pomodoro (25 minutes) on whatever I’m writing.”
– Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain
“My favorite analog toolkit is a Blackwing 602 pencil and a Moleskine notebook. Because I think I’m living in the ’30s or something? I don’t know. But I love Blackwings so much that I have one tattooed on my inner arm.”
– Shane Snow, journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Smartcutsand Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart.
“Pen and paper are lovely. I’m fond of the Pentel EnerGel and the MiracleBind notebook by Blueline.”
– Jessica Bendinger, a screenwriter whose movies have grossed over $500 million worldwide. Her original script Bring It On debuted at #1 in the box office and remained there for two weeks.
“I often sketch things out by hand first. Small notebooks with soft covers. And I’ve been using the same blue Bic pens my whole adult life. I mean literally the same pens, not just the same type of pen. I bought one package at a CVS fifteen years ago and a handful are still good. They’re the clear plastic ones with the ridges, not the opaque white ones. I should write to Bic and tell them. I don’t know what I’ll do when they all run out.”
– Aaron Thier, Author of The Ghost Apple, Mr. Eternity, and The World is a Narrow Bridge and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“During my research phase, my favorite tools are 4×6 notecards and these photo storage boxes. The entire book is outlined and organized on these cards and filed accordingly to which part, which subsection the thoughts or research on that card will be put towards. So each book will literally be made up of thousands of these cards, which are often synthesis from books I’ve read, interviews I’ve done, random thoughts I’ve had and so on. The cards are done by hand—pen, pencil, whatever is close.”
– Ryan Holiday, Ryan Holiday, bestselling author, a ghost-writer, a columnist, an essayist, a Grammy-award winning producer, and book marketer
“For books, I obsessively outline on index cards that I post on a large cork board in my office – each card represents a new scene, and that’s how I write chapters.”
– Bryan Mealer, author of The Kings of Big Spring, Muck City and the New York Times bestseller The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
“Waiter’s pad for ideas. Why waiter’s pad? It’s cheap to get 100 of them. It’s not a big notebook so you can’t write a diary. just a list of ideas. And it’s always a conversation piece in meetings. “I’ll take fries with that burger” is a joke i hear ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time in meetings and then allows me to explain why I have a waiter’s pad.”
– James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself, listed as one of USA Today’s “Best Business Books of All Time,” and Reinvent Yourself, a #1 book overall on Amazon.com.
“[I was] introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”
– Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”
“For outlining and structuring a book or even a chapter, I often use a giant pad of paper, the kind that sits on an easel. They’re not cheap (about $30 for 100 sheets) but they allow a view of an entire storyboard or outline at a single glance, and have room for all kinds of arrows, exclamation points, and other notes. I got this idea from a film producer I know who keeps storyboards of his projects on the wall of his office. The ability to see a story represented as a whole – without needing to advance screens or flip pages—has been a revelation to me.”
– Robert Kurson, author of New York Times bestselling books, Shadow Divers and Pirate Hunters
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