Stephen King’s Daily Routine Involves Four Hours of Writing and a Nap in the Afternoon

During his five-decade career, King has published over 60 novels and 200 short stories that mostly fall into or combine the genres of horror, suspense and science fiction and fantasy. His 2000 book On Writing, a memoir and how-to guide for aspiring authors, recounts how he and his brother, David, were raised by their single mother, frequently moving to different cities across the country. In 1966, King went to the University of Maine, working various jobs to pay tuition, including janitor and gas station attendant. He met his wife, the author Tabitha King, at the university’s library. After graduating, he started selling short stories to magazines while teaching high school; he published his first novel, Carrie, in 1974….

Among the many TV shows and films based on King’s books are Carrie, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. His favorite book he’s ever written recently joined the list; Lisey’s Story, an Apple TV+ series directed by Pablo Larraín, premiered on June 4. In Lisey’s Story, Lisey Landon, played by Julianne Moore, is a widow grieving the death of her husband, Scott, a famous novelist (Clive Owen). While cleaning out Scott’s papers, Lisey is contacted by a threatening fan of Scott’s who eventually begins to stalk her; she also starts to remember parts of her marriage that she had repressed. King, who often leaves the adaptations of his work to other writers, wrote the script for the series. “Call me a sap, call me a sucker if you want, or soft or spongy, but I like a love story,” King says of his affinity for the book. “But it has to be good, it can’t be too corny.”

Here, the author talks to WSJ. about his love of Diet Pepsi and why the pandemic will change fiction going forward.

Are you one of those “four hours a night is all I need!” people with sleep, or do you need a minimum to recharge?

I usually get about six hours a night, sometimes seven. But I also try to take a nap in the afternoon, about an hour. So I’m going to say I get maybe seven and a half hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.

When it comes to caffeine, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

I’m a Diet Pepsi drinker. I drink tea. I hate coffee, so I don’t do coffee.

I know you do sit-ups and push-ups and the treadmill—does that cover your exercise routine?

That’s my routine. I’ll do sit-ups and push-ups four days a week, and try to get on the treadmill. A lot of times I’ll get on the treadmill for half an hour when the news is on at night….

Is there a time of the day or week that you’re most creative?

It’s always mornings. If I’m under the gun, I can work later in the day. But my sweet spot is from 8:30 in the morning to 12:30 in the afternoon. I feel really good at that time. I’ve usually had a walk by then, treadmill, something like that, to get the endorphins flowing a little bit. And then I feel good to go.

You’ve been writing since you were a little kid. How have your writing routines changed over the years? 

I used to have a straight job, I worked as a schoolteacher for awhile when I was first married. It was catch as catch can…because then I’d come home and grade papers. I used to live for vacation weeks because I was able to write in the daytime rather than at night when I was feeling a little bit as though my battery had been on all day long. I would say the nicest thing about being able to do this for a living is I have my time. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs that salivate when you ring a bell: When it gets to be 8:30 in the morning, I feel like I ought to sit down and do some work.

What are your surroundings like when you write?

I have an office and a door that I can shut. Usually the dog sits at the foot of the desk, and I just work there. It’s pretty ordinary, really, it’s just this big messy desk, and I have a desktop computer that I work on. The shades are down because if I look at the outside world too much, I lose the inside world.

When you get an idea for a story, what makes you excited about it and want to pursue it? What makes you decide not to?

It’s always different. I’m trying to think of what it was with Lisey’s Story…. I’ll tell you what it was. I had pneumonia. It was serious, and I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks with it, and I almost died. And my wife decided once she knew that I was going to get better that she was going to redo my office and clean it out completely and reconfigure the furnishings and everything, so I’d have a nice place to come back to. When I came back, that work wasn’t done, and I was very shaky on my feet and skinny and still taking various medications and trying to get better. And she said to me, Don’t go up there, you won’t like it. So of course, I went up there…and I looked around at this big empty room and I thought, This is what it would be like if I died. Everything would be cleaned out. That was really the kernel of the story.

How do you manage so much writing? Do you ever get writer’s block?

I read something the other day that was funny. Somebody said writer’s block is for amateurs. Do I get writer’s block? I had it once. This is like saying I had pneumonia once. The thing is, I don’t outline, I don’t have whole plots in my head in advance. So I’m really happy if I know what’s going to happen tomorrow, which I do, as a matter of fact, I know what’s going to happen in the novel I’m working on. And that’s enough.