Lee Child at work

  This is Dorian Lynskey’s description of Lee Child’s writing routine: 

He would start writing on 1 September every year with a vague premise but no outline. Each day he would start work after lunch, fuelled by cigarettes and coffee (his record is 36 cups). He’d lie on the couch dreaming up the next plot development, then write five or six pages. Ninety working days later, he would have a perfectly plotted 500-page novel. He would then return to the sofa, smoke a joint, and read the manuscript just once, eliminating dead wood but never tweaking the story. Remarkably, this improvisational strategy never failed.

 

I’d like to believe it’s true — that someone out there can write like that.

Among the many things to admire about Child’s routine is his sense of balance. After three months of work, he would take a nine-month vacation. Wouldn’t you agree the proportion is about right?

I’m interested in routines, practices and rituals. I recently started Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Thanks to Michael Leddy for recommending it.

• Sources: Dorian Lynskey, “Lee Child: ‘I’d rather be a multi-millionaire than a credible author’”; The i Paper, Sept. 4, 2025. It’s here:

https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/lee-child-rather-multi-millionaire-than-credible-author-3885891

I heard about it from Julian Girdham’s newsletter, The Fortnightly.

Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.