I tried Stephen King's writing routine!

6 29 a.m walk about three and a half miles his goal every day is to write six pages I'm really enjoying this routine of having a great time hello everyone and welcome to another video today we're going to be trying another author writing routine so far we have done Haruhi murakami Neil Gaiman Donata Octavia E Butler just to name a few and so I went out to you guys and I asked what author you wanted to see next and overwhelmingly everyone wanted to see Stephen King Stephen King's fighting routine is one of the very first writing routines I remember reading about because I read his book on writing when I was in uni it was recommended to me by one of my writing lecturers so I read it and I really loved it and it left a massive impression on me I feel like Stephen King needs no introduction but I'm gonna go ahead and introduce him anyway who is Stephen King born in 1947 Stephen King is one of the world's most commercially successful authors he has been dubbed America's king of horror and he's well known for books like The Shining the understand and also the scary clown one which I don't want to Google and put an example of the cover of because I'm a 27 year old adult who doesn't like clowns his debut novel was published in 1974 and it's about a girl whose name is Carrie who's in high school she's bullied and then she finds out she has telekinetic Powers King actually threw the story in the bin very famously he tossed it into the waste paper basket and it was his wife Tabitha who fished it out and told him to give it another go his debut novel was a massive success and it launched his career now according to google Stephen King has published at least 74 books which have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide he's well known for his prolific output of writing so what was his writing routine over the course of Stephen King's almost 50-year riding career his routine is obviously shifted and changed however according to this Rolling Stone article King says I wake up I eat breakfast I walk about three and a half miles that's 5.7 kilometers to those of us who are metric I come back I go to my little office where I've got a manuscript in the last pay age that I was happy with is on top I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off in other interviews he's also mentioned that he writes at least six pages a day the way that I work I try to get out there and I try to get six pages a day 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 this normally equates to about two thousand words a day he also says I have a glass of water or a cup of tea there's a certain time I sit down from 8 to 8 30 I have my vitamin pill and my music sit in the same seat and the papers are all arranged in the same places the cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind you're going to be dreaming soon this is quite similar to Hurricane murakami's ethos on writing where he says that he wants to be mesmerized by doing the same thing every day King also says that in his earlier days he listened to the same music specifically the same same songs over and over again when I sit down to write my job is to move the story there is such a thing as Pace in writing and if people read me because they're getting a story that's paced a certain way it's because they sense I want to get to where I'm going I don't want to dawdle around and look at the scenery to achieve that pace I used to listen to music a lot of the times the music will drive my wife crazy because it will be the same thing over and over again and then he is also quoted as saying that he finishes writing between 11 30 and 1 30 and after that he's free to do whatever he likes taking naps reading Etc so to summarize what I'm going to be doing is number one getting up between 6 and 6 30 so that I can go for an hour-long Walk and Walk my 5.7 kilometers I'm pretty sure it's going to take me roughly an hour I did a Google of it I have a route I'm gonna take 5.7 kilometers is probably going to be roughly an hour's worth of walking take my vitamins this is actually a really good reminder for me to take my vitamin D tablet actually I really need to remember to take it I'm gonna aim to be at my desk between 8 AM and 8 30. I'm gonna write until midday and I'm gonna spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want whether that's like reading or taking a nap or whatever it sounds wonderful and very relaxing I'm looking forward to it so without further Ado let's jump into it here are three days of me trying out Stephen King's writing routine good morning it is right now 6 29 a.m on Tuesday morning and is the first day of this challenge I tried to get up at six didn't go super well but the thing is with this routine there's no set time to wake up as far as I can see so all we need to do really is just get that 5.7 kilometer walk-in and have breakfast and everything before I sit down to write [Music] it is pretty much time for us to leave it is quite cold outside it's currently 11 degrees Celsius where are my keys I'm not the kind of person who gets up early but what I love about doing these routines is that it forces me to try new things I never go walking this early but the birds are so pretty I think I'm like two kilometers in at this point I have music it's a lovely walk oh my walk is all done morning walk 6562 steps I walked 5.72 kilometers it was quite peaceful being out that early in the morning I am now going to get ready for the day and do all that kind of stuff Stephen King tends to have tea or water which suits me very well as many of you have picked up on by now I do drink a lot of tea in fact the project I'm working on is called project teacup anyway we're gonna make some tea I have some sencha today oh it is now time for us to start writing for today let me bring up my document currently working on chapter 20 if you're new here hello my name is Christy I'm currently working on an adult fantasy novel which is going by the Alias of project teacup I'm currently working on the final draft of the story and we have just we have just gone past the halfway point on the final draft I want it to be done very soon my original deadline was the end of this month the end of July given that I still have half a book to edit I don't know if that's realistic probably not the book is currently sitting at 104 076 Words which if you've been following the rest of the videos in my project teacup series if you've seen me working on the book or talking about it on patreon or Instagram or any of the various places where I talk about this book my goal this whole time has been to try and get the word count as close to a hundred thousand words as possible I still have maybe like two I think I have about 3 000 extra words I need to add into the story once I've finished this draft because I just have a couple little moments of characterization that I want to add in however back onto Stephen King and his writing routine he tends to work from 8am to about midday his goal every day is to write six pages so let's jump into it and we can get started on writing for today foreign [Music] hello it is quite a while later I'm all done with writing for today I had an okay writing day it was a bit of a tougher concentration day which makes sense because I've been like really gung-ho on finishing this book and getting everything done and um you know I've not really taken a day off from it in a really long time and Stephen King is actually one of those writers that suggests to people to write every day or at least he writes every single day and I love that for him that's not the way that I usually work though I I find that I tend to need days off in order to let my brain recharge especially because my day job is like quite creative and it's quite creatively draining and so writing is not the only creative thing that I do we had a really hectic weekend that's why there's like stuff all over the floor we actually went to afcon which is Adelaide's like anime and video game convention because my partner is a indie game developer so we went to the indie games room and he showed his game which he's currently working on it's currently available on Steam to wishlist it's a lot of fun but essentially I was running between the Indie Games Booth because I was helping out and like helping people play the game and I was there so Tyler could take breaks and stuff and then running between that and like places where I could go and write so I did manage to hit halfway on the book on the weekend getting towards the end but it's just it was an okay riding day today it wasn't amazing I'm hoping tomorrow is better I'm now gonna get my lunch and then I'm gonna spend the rest of the afternoon not really doing very much I'm excited to get up again tomorrow and to go for another walk and to do some writing [Music] hi everyone it is 6 30 and I'm awake again I'm gonna make breakfast again first quickly today though I'm just gonna make pancakes I always make pancakes on the weekend and because we were at the convention we didn't have time for it and so like it's Wednesday but today's a pancake kind of day [Music] thank you thank you I think if you weren't used to walking long distances you might get a bit fatigued trying this out but I love walking I go walking a lot I was doing Wordle while I was eating my breakfast because I'm trying to keep myself off of social media first thing in the mornings and so I was like right I need something else to give me dopamine straight away so we'll do the New York Times mini crossword and Wordle and stuff and I made so many mistakes like I kept repeat putting letters in places they should have been anyway despite me being a little bit sleepy I'm not nearly as tired as it would have been like if I had to get up much much earlier than this so I am joyful and happy that I only had to get up at 6 30. it's not that early seven degrees right now outside so that's that's a bit brisk probably just gonna listen to music again grandson because it's not actually gray and like rainy today uh the sunlight's really pretty and also it's a really good time to think about storytelling and writing I always find that um I brainstorm really well when I'm walking and listening to music like just particularly listening to music if I was listening to an audiobook I wouldn't be brainstorming that much but um music's a really good one to help me and I was really excited for this routine because it specifically says that you're supposed to take your vitamins during the routine and I'm very bad at remembering um so we're gonna do that actually when we get home we're going to take the vitamins [Applause] it is just after 8 A.M and I'm gonna go get ready for the day and then we can start writing yesterday as I mentioned wasn't the best writing day you know I worked a bit on chapter 20 I did my last little proofread of it um I had a look at chapter 21 I potted around with a bunch of different things as I've mentioned before because this is the final draft of project teacup I need to make sure that there aren't any mistakes left I need to make sure that I've definitely closed any possible plot holes and errors and I just want to make sure the continuity of certain things is working well I definitely got my six pages done though I'm starting on page 208 today we'll see how we go by the end of the day I'll let you know what page I get up to fingers crossed that today is a good writing day I did forget to mention this yesterday the fact that Stephen King always listens to the same music is the same as what I do I find it hilarious that Stephen King would listen to Mumbo number five over and over again like that is not the kind of song that I would pick for him um but I love that and I find that hilarious today and every day that I've worked on Project teacup I've listened to the same one hour compilation of Music this playlist is now very precious to me because obviously I've listened to it uh literally thousands of times I'm returning to you many hours later with now dry hair it's 1 30. it's just past 1 30. so I've got my new words in blue I've got my old words in black and I'm slowly slowly working away at the story and so technically what I've written today in total 208 all the way down to 215. I've written 1995 Pages nope 1995 words is what I've written today and Polished today and worked on so as I've mentioned with this draft over and over again my goal has been to cut down on as many words as possible and what I keep doing is adding in more words because I keep finding moments that need more depth or more clarity and so I'm like massively editing down this story I'm cutting a lot of description I'm cutting a lot of dialogue and like making everything just as concise as it can be and then I'm also adding in more words so so far for this chapter I've actually added 88 words for the last chapter chapter 20 T I added 535 words so that's what I did yesterday so the total words of the story so far are sitting at around a hundred and four thousand and I've cut out roughly 2 200 words of the overall book in this draft I'm hoping to cut out another thousand and then I'll probably add back in another two or three thousand words with the like extra bits I have to add in I'm not going to spend the rest of the afternoon reading probably I just started reading Emily Henry's happy place which is probably not the vibe for Stephen King video honestly I should probably read something a lot scarier than that probably one of Stephen King's books but what I'm reading at the moment is Emily Henry so that's what we're going with and then I'll check back in with you guys at 6am tomorrow foreign [Music] today is Thursday and it's the final day of this challenge um I'm sitting at my desk it's 8 25 a.m and I am ready to start writing For Today Chapter 23 is what we're working on today and I'm just going to keep plodding away at this story this routine has not been overly dramatic I've really enjoyed it I really like the walking element if I had to be really picky and critical I'd say that I don't love having to get to my desk by 8 30 if I'm taking like an hour long walk that's maybe a smidge early for me to wake up just for my preferences on when I want to get up but otherwise it's been pretty chill and I love having that much walking time in the morning I'm really enjoying this routine I'm having a great time thank you it is now four hours later and I'm all done with writing work for today I had a good time while doing this routine from the perspective of the book I'm working on Project teacup I've gotten quite a lot of work done every day I managed to get to at least six pages so around 2 000 words I'm gonna go do some reading have some lunch [Music] so how did we go with Stephen King's writing routine I feel like this was the easiest routine I've done so far out of all of the author's routines I think maybe Neil Gaiman was the other one that suited me the most I really loved this one I really loved getting to walk each morning before I got to my writing I kind of find it challenging to make time for that stuff in the morning or during the day because I tell myself you know this is the work day this is the time to do work if you're up at a certain time you should start working by a certain time so um going for an hour long walk in the morning Feels Like A really lovely nourishing thing to do I mentioned a number of times which got me in trouble a little bit with some people um in the Ursula K Le Guin routine that I found Ursula K Le guin's routine quite self-indulgent in a really positive way I found that it was a routine that seemed to nourish the self you know spending time thinking making time for listening to music or playing music whatever it was I think it's really interesting interesting looking at these artists who actively make time you know to go for an hour walk every morning to spend an extra five hours reading and and just doing fun stuff because they have the luxury of being full-time creatives and full-time artists I don't think there's anything wrong at all with taking that much time during the day for leisure activities I think it's like a really like amazing thing to Aspire to and so I really loved doing Stephen King's routine in the same way that I loved doing Ursula K Le guin's routine because I found that there were a lot of moments during the day that were really fun like just like reading or like going for an hour long walk I didn't mind getting up at around 6 30 a.m I found that that was okay still a little bit too early for me I am a night owl overall I really enjoyed it I love getting to be awake early in the morning and listening to all the like tweeting birds it was really lovely seeing the sunrise I really liked the fact that I had a specific goal each day for how many words to write slash how many pages to write the six page thing and overall I really enjoyed doing Stephen King's writing routine please let me know which writing routine you'd like to see next slash which reading challenge you'd like me to do and also finally I wanted to say a really big thank you to everyone over on patreon for supporting my channel over on patreon we have a whole bunch of bonus content bonus videos I just uploaded a video on writing craft and how I plot stories I also just uploaded a review and Analysis of yellowface by RF Quang which is the book we read for this month for our book clubs that's like a 30 minute video that's up there there's so many things writing Snippets updates we have a private Discord server as well so if you'd like to check out patreon please feel free to click the link in the description down below take care everyone and I will see you next time bye

Channel: Christy Anne Jones

Views: 145,849

Keywords: christy anne jones, aileaux, I tried Stepehen King's writing routine, writing routine, early morning routine, i tried haruki murakami's 4am writing routine, I tried donna tartt's writing routine, I tried virginia woolf's writing routine, ultimate writing routine, how to write like stephen king, stephen king, on writing, stephen king routine, nanowrimo, day in the life of a writer, day in the life of stephen king, writing like stephen king, Project Tea Cup, writing vlog

Id: X1DZIL-YjI4

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023