{"id":5211,"date":"2022-12-09T10:11:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepencompany.live\/blog\/?p=5211"},"modified":"2022-12-09T10:11:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:11:28","slug":"famous-authors-writing-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepencompany.live\/blog\/writing\/famous-authors-writing-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous authors and their writing habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever wondered how your favourite books came into existence? Writing a book takes much more than a good idea \u2014 many popular authors repeatedly practice the same writing habits when coining their creations. Discover the writing rituals of famous writers and adopt some of their unusual routines.<\/p>\n

Dan Brown<\/h2>\n

Best known for his Robert Langdon series featuring the famous Da Vinci Code <\/em>(2003), Dan Brown has one of the more strange habits of famous writers.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Sunday Times<\/em>, he revealed he often hangs upside down from an exercise frame<\/a>, wearing a pair of gravity boots to clear his head. He claimed that letting go and relaxing helped fine-tune his ideas \u2014 unsurprising, considering his complex plots of cryptography and symbology.<\/p>\n

Brown also shared he sets his computer to freeze every hour for 60 seconds and takes a minibreak of sit-ups and push-ups. Combined with an early 4 am start, Brown\u2019s writing routine may sound gruelling, but it certainly works.<\/p>\n

Maya Angelou<\/h2>\n

Early starts were also a favourite of memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Like Brown, she started the day at 4 am<\/a> too, and began writing within an hour of getting up.<\/p>\n

Angelou also adopted Virginia Woolf\u2019s advice of having a \u2018room of one\u2019s own\u2019 to write in and rented a hotel room away from home to pen<\/a> her creations. This distinction between work and home helped cement her as one of the world\u2019s most influential writers.<\/p>\n

When she returned home in the afternoon, she would busy herself with household chores and making her family dinner before reading what she\u2019d written that day to her husband. A healthy work\/life balance, if we ever did see one.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama<\/h2>\n

\"Democratic<\/p>\n

Barack Obama may be best known for being the 44th<\/sup> President of the United States. However, he\u2019s also written three books about his life and time in the political spotlight.<\/p>\n

Unlike the previous early risers on our list, Obama was famously a night owl, retreating to his office after his wife and kids were asleep to write. His 750+ page memoir, A Promised Land<\/em> (2020), was mostly penned between 10 pm and 2 am. More surprisingly, Obama wrote the entire first draft by hand on yellow legal pads<\/a>, using a black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, his efforts and late nights weren\u2019t in vain, as the book became the best-selling presidential memoir in modern times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Susan Sontag<\/h2>\n

Writing down our resolutions can be an excellent way to manifest change in our daily routines, something novelist<\/a> and essay writer Susan Sontag understood.<\/p>\n

In her 1977 diary<\/a>, Sontag shared her resolutions that helped form her daily writing habits:<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting tomorrow \u2014 if not today:<\/p>\n