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đź“ť Michael Connelly's Writing Routine
"If you want to be a writer, then write. Don’t think about it, do it. Every writing experience is a learning process. The more you do it, the better you will get."
Famous Writing Routines
January 01, 2024
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.
Michael Connelly is an American author best-known for his detective and crime fiction novels featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller.
If you want to be a writer, then write. Don’t think about it, do it. Every writing experience is a learning process. The more you do it, the better you will get.
When writing his debut novel, The Black Echo, which was also the first book of his to introduce the Harry Bosch character, Michael Connelly was still working as a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times. While staying on the job provided him with valuable insights that would feed into his writing, it also meant that he had to juggle two careers.
“At the time I didn’t have kids. I went to my wife and said that I wanted to work on the book nights and at least one weekend day, every week,” Connelly said in an interview with January Magazine. “Her support was a key thing to getting that first book done.”
The future detective author had been inspired to become a mystery writer when he first saw the Robert Altman film The Long Goodbye, released in 1973, which was based on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel of the same name. After watching the film, Connelly went home and read the rest of Chandler’s books that featured the character Philip Marlowe, and subsequently transferred to the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications to major in journalism and minor in creative writing.
Connelly’s dream of becoming a mystery writer didn’t happen right away. After graduating in 1980, he got a job as a crime reporter at the Daytona Beach News Journal where he worked for almost two years. From there, he moved to the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel where he covered the South Florida cocaine wars.
In 1986, after he and two other reporters covered a story about the survivors of the 1985 Delta Flight 191 plane crash, Connelly received widespread recognition and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
The story’s success and the subsequent national attention he received earned Connelly a spot at the Los Angeles Times where he worked as a crime reporter. It was there that Connelly would begin his writing career, balancing the crime beat with his passion for writing on the side.
“I guess I lived two lives,” he recalled. “I didn’t even quit my job until after The Concrete Blonde, though I took a leave-of-absence to write some of it. When I was done I realized it was pretty hard to do both of these things, and at that point I was making enough money from the books that I could replace my salary. I try never to lose sight that I’ve been extremely lucky in that way.”
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