📝 Ben Fountain’s Writing Routine

"I would love to be one of these prolific writers who comes out with a book every two years. But I guess I’m just not that kind of writer."

Welcome to Famous Writing Routines, where we explore the daily habits, writing process, and work routines of some of the most renowned authors throughout history.

Ben Fountain is an American author, best-known for his short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories, and his 2012 debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

Some people are binge writers. They kill themselves for three or four days straight, and then don’t write for three or four days or for weeks or months. I work at it five days a week, sometimes six, sometimes seven, very steadily.

Ben Fountain Talks to Noreen Tomassi | The Center for Fiction

Ben Fountain’s road to becoming a published author was a long, winding one. At 54 years old, the North Carolina-born, Dallas-based writer published his debut novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which became one of the most acclaimed books of the year; winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize as well as being a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award.

But Fountain hadn’t originally set out to be a writer. In 1988, only a few years after he graduated from the Duke University School of Law and started working as an associate at the real estate law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, he quit his job to pursue full-time fiction writing.

“I was tremendously apprehensive,” Fountain recalled in an interview with The New Yorker. “I felt like I’d stepped off a cliff and I didn’t know if the parachute was going to open. Nobody wants to waste their life, and I was doing well at the practice of law. I could have had a good career. And my parents were very proud of me—my dad was so proud of me. It was crazy.”

Beginning his new life as a writer — on a Monday, no less — Fountain stuck to a structured workday, sitting down at his kitchen table at 7.30 every morning and writing all the way until lunchtime. After that, he’d take a break and lie down on the floor for 20 minutes to rest his mind. Then it was back to writing for a few more hours.

“I figured out very early on that if I didn’t get my writing done I felt terrible,” he told Malcolm Gladwell. “So I always got my writing done. I treated it like a job. I did not procrastinate.”

đź“š Become a premium member for just $50 USD/year to read the rest of this routine and explore the daily habits that shaped the works of Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Joseph Heller, Haruki Murakami, Richard Powers, Ian Fleming, David Grann, Neil Gaiman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gillian Flynn, George Pelecanos, and many more. đź“š