Many prolific writers credit their literary success to personal writing routines. After researching and compiling information about famous authors’ routines, we’ve highlighted three recurring themes we noticed authors factoring into their creative process.

Of course, even though these authors are each successful, you still need to find what routine works for you specifically. Perhaps though, reading about these writing routines will inspire you to experiment with new schedules that help you reach your literary goals!

Keep reading for three lessons we learned about popular authors’ successful routines.

#1: BUILD AND MAINTAIN WRITING STAMINA.

It’s important to carve out time for focused writing sessions each week. This consistency builds your “writing stamina” while alleviating the stress you might put on yourself to have excellent creative outcomes. If it’s just another day of writing, you won’t expect your work to be perfect and it will be easier to accept your progress—as messy as it might be—as a positive thing. These authors hold themselves accountable for writing on a regular basis and take active steps to reduce any distractions that might impact their writing stamina and focus.

I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
— Haruki Murakami

If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start—but at least you’re practicing and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. It can’t be done.
— Ray Bradbury

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day; it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
— John Steinbeck

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.
— Leo Tolstoy

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write. […] A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in—even if it’s dead silent at home.
—Nathan Englander

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.
— Ernest Hemingway

 

#2: CREATE MEASURABLE GOALS.

Making your work measurable will give you a sense of accomplishment since you’ll know exactly when you’ve reached your goal. This measurement could be a page quota, word count, or time expectation. The following authors use of number of devices to track and measure their literary goals.

The way that I work, I try to get out there and I try to get six pages a day. So, with a book like End of Watch, and … when I’m working, I work every day—three, four hours, and I try to get those six pages, and I try to get them fairly clean. So, if the manuscript is, let’s say, 360 pages long, that’s basically two month’s work. … But that’s assuming it goes well.
— Stephen King

I write every morning, seven days a week. I write starting about eight o’clock and finish around eleven … I am so compulsive that I have a quota of pages.
— Alice Munro

It had at this time become my custom, —and is still my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient of myself—to write with my watch before me, and to require of myself 250 words every quarter of an hour.
— Anthony Trollope

I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it—when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
— Jodi Picoult

I know many writers who try to hit a set word count every day, but for me, time spent inside a fictional world tends to be a better measure of a productive writing day. I think I’m fairly generative as a writer, I can produce a lot of words, but volume is not the best metric for me. It’s more a question of, did I write for four or five hours of focused time, when I did not leave my desk, didn’t find some distraction to take me out of the world of the story?
— Karen Russell

 

#3: DEVELOP A HEALTHY WORK-LIFE BALANCE.

Giving yourself breaks from work is crucial. Not only does this establish a healthy work-life balance, but it can also improve your productivity levels. Interestingly, many famous authors intentionally build their writing routines so that it’s clear when writing time is over and it is time to transition into their personal lives.

If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous. I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind.
— Maya Angelou

I first have tea and then, at about ten o’clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o’clock, I go back to work and continue until nine. I have no difficulty in picking up the thread in the afternoon.
— Simone de Beauvoir

Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
— Henry Miller

I’m immensely grateful to my family for normalizing my life, for making it a requirement that I end my day at some point and go and make dinner. That’s a healthy thing, to set work aside and make dinner and eat it. It’s healthy to have these people in my life who help me to carry on a civilized routine. […] Being a mother has made me a better writer. It’s also true to say that being a writer has made me a better mother.
— Barbara Kingsolver

I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle—it’s a nice kind of interlude.
— Don DeLillo