📝 David Baldacci’s Writing Routine

"I’m not a words-per-day kind of guy. I always felt that if you have an artificial number, it probably means that you don’t want to be writing, anyway."

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.

David Baldacci is an American author, screenwriter and former attorney, best-known for his suspense and legal thriller novels like Absolute Power.

You have to ask yourself why you want to be a writer and you have to have passion in the belly for it. It can't be just because you hate your day job and you want to sell the film rights, because it's going to take a long time. It's a craft, which means you're going to be an apprentice for life. Nobody ever masters the art of writing.

‘You’re going to be an apprentice for life’: David Baldacci shares his advice for aspiring writers | Pan Macmillan

David Baldacci has been writing stories ever since he was a child. It all started when his mother gave him a lined notebook as a way to keep him quiet and give herself a break, although the author credits this as the moment which inspired his writing career.

But Baldacci didn’t launch into publishing novels right away. Instead he studied political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and later, law at the University of Virginia School of Law, after which he worked as a trial attorney for nine years in Washington, D.C.

But the writing bug never left him. “And that was the time period where I was really focusing on all my novel writing career,” Baldacci recalled in his Masterclass. “I'd done screenplays, didn't have really any success. I thought, you know what? I want to attempt a novel.”

So like fellow legal thriller writer John Grisham, Baldacci began juggling his novelistic ambitions with his career. Because his work as a lawyer started early in the morning, the only time he had to write was at night — after his family went to bed, Baldacci would head downstairs at 10pm and write until 2am. He would also find some time throughout the day — during his lunch break for instance — to jot down some notes or “bang out a page.”

“My wife obviously was very instrumental,” he recalled in an interview with The Strand Magazine. “We had a family, and she took on more of the labor of that, allowing me to write at night, early in the morning, and on the weekends.”

He kept up his side writing routine every day, seven days a week for three years until his first novel, Absolute Power, was completed. Published in 1996, the book became an international best-seller and was adapted into a 1997 film starring Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. The success enabled Baldacci to quit practising law and dedicate himself to writing full-time.

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