📝 Tim Weaver’s Writing Routine

“Finish what you’ve started. Then put it away for a while. Come back to it with fresh eyes.”

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.

Before he was an international bestselling author, Tim Weaver was writing about video games. He covered Super Nintendo titles for Total!, wrote features for N64 Magazine, and later became a senior editor at Xbox World. It was fast-paced work—tight deadlines, punchy copy, the next console always on the horizon. But even then, Weaver had another ambition: he wanted to write fiction. Not just short stories or scattered scenes, but full-blown thrillers—books you could lose yourself in.

He wrote at night, after work. In the quiet hours, while the rest of the house slept, he chipped away at drafts and taught himself how to build suspense. His heroes were Michael Connelly, John Connolly, Raymond Chandler. He didn’t try to imitate them, exactly, but he studied their rhythm, their structure, their emotional depth. When Chasing the Dead came out in 2010, it introduced readers to David Raker, a former journalist turned missing persons investigator—and launched a series that would become one of the most popular crime franchises in the UK.

Since then, Weaver has published more than a dozen thrillers, recorded a hit podcast, and become a fixture on the Richard & Judy Book Club. But he still approaches writing the way he always has: late at night, cup of tea in hand, wrestling his way through the next chapter.

Tim Weaver’s daily writing routine

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