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- 📝 Paul Auster’s Writing Routine
📝 Paul Auster’s Writing Routine
"Writing is very hard, it’s very hard to write a good sentence. It doesn’t come easy. But the difficulty is part of the pleasure."
Famous Writing Routines
February 18, 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.
Paul Auster is an American writer and film director, best-known for the The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, The Brooklyn Follies, Invisible, and Sunset Park.
I don’t know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t have to. But it is a compulsion. You don’t choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.
During a 2016 Q&A with Goodreads members, Paul Auster was asked to describe his life as a writer.
“There was a Monty Python sketch that showed Thomas Hardy writing in front of a live audience, and when he’d finish a sentence, they’d all cheer,” Auster explained to the audience. “Then he’d cross out a sentence, and they’d all boo or sigh. That’s about as exciting a life as it is for a writer: You write sentences, and you cross out sentences.”
Known best for his New York-centred novels, Auster, who originally hails from Newark, New Jersey, has lived in Brooklyn for 30 years, and currently resides there with his wife, novelist and essayist, Siri Hustvedt.
“Siri and I have been together for 30 years and have shared our work with each other from the very beginning,” Auster said. “As I write my books I’m reading them out loud, carrying pages home, eagerly awaiting her comments. She’s brilliant. I don’t think there’s a comment she’s made that I haven’t taken to heart over those years. Conversely, I read everything she writes, in her finished draft.”
When he is working on a novel, Auster tends to “stick to a rigid routine,” waking up between 7-8am to have his orange juice and tea, and to read the newspaper. At about 9am, the writer will walk three blocks down to another apartment he owns in the same neighbourhood and begin his writing day.
It's very Spartan here, nothing to do but work. I spend as much time as I can writing each day, which usually means from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.—basically a 9-5 schedule. Some days one has more stamina, you're more on fire, it's a marathon so you have to pace yourself.
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Read the rest of Paul Auster’s writing routine here.
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