I'm reading 100 debut novels by great authors — the "100 Debut Novels" project.
I just finished number eight.
Reading their debut works, something becomes clear.
They didn't write because they were geniuses. They wrote because they had the habit of writing.
Here's a look back at each author's writing habits. I've picked only the essentials worth stealing as a novelist.
If anything catches your eye, steal it without hesitation.
I'd be happy if you mixed even just one of these into your own routine.
Lewis Carroll
Write for just one person
"Who should I be writing for?"
That's the first wall every beginning writer hits.
Carroll's answer was dead simple.
Just one person, right in front of him.
He improvised a story on a boat to make the girl sitting next to him — Alice — laugh. That became the origin of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Not words crafted for the masses. A story spun with nothing more than, "Will this make her smile?"
When you're stuck, picture the face of that one person you want to reach.
Mary Shelley
Transplant classical motifs into cutting-edge science
Shelley wrote Frankenstein at eighteen.
What she did was transplant classical motifs — Milton's Paradise Lost, the Prometheus myth — into the cutting-edge science of her time: Galvani's bioelectric experiments and research into the creation of life.
The old and the new.
Serious knowledge and playfulness.
That combination gave birth to the origin of science fiction, still read 200 years later.
Find inspiration in serious "play"
The spark came from a game with the poet Byron and friends at a lakeside villa by Lake Geneva, stuck indoors by endless rain: "Let's each write the scariest ghost story we can."
Play, but dead serious.
What would happen if you combined your "classical toolkit" with your current interests?
Homer
Cut just "a few dozen days" from ten years
"The story's scope is too vast — where do I even start?"
Homer's Iliad draws from the ten-year Trojan War.
But he depicted only a few dozen days.
No Trojan Horse.
No ending to the war.
Focus the theme on one person's emotion
Instead, he zeroed in on one thing: the trajectory of the mightiest warrior Achilles' "wrath."
Extract only the core from vast material.
This technique is incredibly useful for writing short stories too. Is there anything you could cut from your own story?
Françoise Sagan
Steal the "eyes" of great writers
Gide at thirteen.
Camus at fifteen.
Rimbaud at sixteen.
Sagan devoured the masters of French literature one after another as a teenager. She even took her pen name "Sagan" from a character in her beloved Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
But she didn't just read.
What she stole was the writers' "eyes" themselves — how they observed people and put hard-to-name emotions into words.
Condense sensibility into few pages
Her debut Bonjour Tristesse, written at eighteen, was just 178 pages. Yet it was packed with eighteen years of sensibility.
François Mauriac called her "a charming little monster" on the front page of Le Figaro, and she won the Prix des Critiques. Word of mouth exploded, turning it into a global bestseller.
Not volume — density.
When you read, try asking yourself: "What is this writer seeing?"
Truman Capote
Drill in "three hours every day" as a boy
Capote started writing journals and stories at eight.
As a boy, he always had a notepad and dictionary tucked in his pocket — every conversation, every human gesture became material for observation.
"The way other kids would go home and practice the violin or the piano, I would go home from school every day and write for about three hours."
His own words.
His childhood companion was Harper Lee, his next-door neighbor. The two shared a typewriter and wrote together.
Evolve into a "human tape recorder"
The fascinating part is how Capote changed as an adult.
When writing In Cold Blood, he stopped carrying a notepad. He trained himself as a "human tape recorder" — no notebook, no recorder during interviews.
He built the discipline to reproduce his subjects' words from memory alone.
The foundation of "write every day" from boyhood, and the evolution into "record with all five senses" as an adult.
Harper Lee
Write for seven years, evenings and weekends only
"I'll write once the conditions are right."
Lee didn't wait for that.
She kept writing for seven years, using only her evenings after work and her days off.
Tear it apart and rebuild until you're satisfied
Her weekend routine was intense. First draft from noon, second draft after dinner. She'd dismantle the story completely and reconstruct it, working until two or three in the morning — "until everything was exactly the way I wanted it."
No word-count quota. The only measure was satisfaction.
Spend two and a half years on a complete rewrite
The first draft she wrote in five months after going full-time was called "a series of anecdotes" by her editor, Tay Hohoff.
From there, another two and a half years of total rewriting. Three years of focused effort produced the masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird.
Don't wait for the perfect environment. Write with the time you have.
Then tear it apart and fix it until you're satisfied.
Umberto Eco
Turn your unread pile into "intellectual inventory"
Eco had over 30,000 books across his homes. But here's what he said:
"A bookshelf isn't a report card of what you've read — it's a supply yard you go to when you need something."
That mountain of unread books isn't something to be ashamed of. It's intellectual inventory.
Create "searchable fragments" with file cards
Eco classified and accumulated what he read on file cards.
Bibliographic cards, reading cards, idea cards.
By turning his reading into "fragments he could search later," he shortened the research process that normally takes six to eight years, and wrote The Name of the Rose in two.
Spend a full year building the world before writing
The year before writing was devoted to meticulous world-building: monastery floor plans, counting spiral staircase steps, calculating walking times.
He spent two months walking only medieval-era streets in Paris, immersing himself physically as if living as a medieval person.
When you're stuck, add more constraints
When stuck, don't expand your freedom — add constraints.
"Fix it at 120 chapters." "Don't let the setting leave the room."
Binding yourself with rules can drive your brain into motion.
Read aloud, rearrange with scissors and glue
Read aloud, then cut and paste paper with scissors and glue to rearrange the structure.
Read, record, build worlds, feel with your body, narrow with constraints.
Eco's habits are a textbook for the entire novel preparation process.
Agatha Christie
Let plots simmer while doing the dishes
"The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes."
Christie's famous line.
She divided her year into an "idea fermentation period" and a "writing sprint period."
Instead of sitting at her desk year-round, she'd enjoy housework and walks while letting plots simmer in her head.
Write in one burst during a two-week hotel lockdown sprint
Once the story was fully assembled in her mind, she'd lock herself in a hotel and write in one go.
Her debut The Mysterious Affair at Styles was written during a two-week stay at the Moorland Hotel.
She wrote furiously for three to four hours each morning, walked the moors in the afternoon, and slept twelve hours like a log each night.
Scatter 73 notebooks along your daily routes
Another habit worth stealing: her 73 notebooks.
Handbag, coat pocket, bedside, living room.
She always had five or six half-used notebooks positioned to catch inspiration at maximum speed.
She was the kind of person who'd scribble a poisoning trick in the margin of a grocery list.
No index, no chronological order. She'd flip through them years later and connect old fragments with new ideas.
Just a sturdy table
All she needed was "just a sturdy table."
No fuss about location, no reliance on tools — she trusted the fermentation happening inside her head.
Conclusion
We've looked at the habits of eight authors.
Even great writers started as ordinary people who simply had the habit of writing.
Try mixing even just one of these into your own routine today.