📝 Jeffrey Archer’s Writing Routine

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.

Jeffrey Archer is an English novelist, best-known for his 1979 book, Kane and Abel, which remains as one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 35 million copies sold worldwide.

When Jeffrey Archer was studying for his Diploma of Education at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, he was also a successful athlete, competing in sprinting and hurdling, and eventually he became the president of the Oxford University Athletic Club. Later on in his novelist life, Archer credited the discipline and competitive spirit of his writing career to his time at Oxford.

“The training to run and to be an athlete inculcated itself in me without realising it,” he said in an interview with The National. “So when I said I want to be a writer, that same brain said: ‘You wanted to go to the Olympics and now you want to be a writer? Well, then, you have to train hard, work hard and play for gold’.”

Since publishing his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, in 1976, Archer has gone on to write over 40 works, including novels, plays, non-fiction, children’s books, and short story collections. Over the years, his pace of publishing books hasn’t slowed, rather it has increased if anything.

“I used to write one every two years, but this has accelerated to one a year,” he wrote on his website. “It normally takes me about six weeks to produce a first draft. I then take a four-week break and get away from it. I come back and do another draft. That takes another four weeks, and I handwrite the whole thing out again.”

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