Authors, habits, drafts, and deadline reality.
Writer's Routine talks with authors about how books actually get made. The conversations stay close to working habits: planning, momentum, confidence, revision, genre switches, deadlines, and the odd pressure of treating imagination as a job.
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Writer's Routine is an author-interview show with its attention fixed on the working day. It asks a simple question and keeps finding new angles on it. How does a book get written when life, deadlines, promotion, anxiety, and other jobs all crowd the desk? The conversations are warm and direct, with a practical curiosity that keeps pulling guests away from vague inspiration and back toward habits, tools, drafts, and decisions. Recent episodes range across historical fiction, crime, romance, mythology, children's writing, and genre-shifting thrillers. The thread is process. Annie Elliot talks about learning from critique, reading from a writer's point of view, and gaining confidence through study. Stig Abell connects writing momentum to a demanding breakfast radio schedule, while also worrying about books, attention, AI, and culture. Elle McNicoll describes the tension of being a full-time author who still has to defend writing time as real work. Jane Dougherty brings myth, country life, and sensory writing into the frame. Carmel Harrington looks back at early novels as an apprenticeship and considers how thriller writing changes dialogue and revelation. Kate Dramis talks about writing sprints, getting stuck, author friends, and letting a bad draft exist long enough to become useful. Farah Naz Rishi links voice acting to character work, especially when a character is hard to like. Patrick Syms brings in self-promotion, white label releases, and the danger of making prose too pointed. The show is measured rather than flashy. It often includes sponsor reads and listener support reminders, but the core appeal is the steady return to how writers make choices under real conditions. It suits readers who want more than publication chat and writers who want to hear how other people manage the messy middle.
Made for: For readers, aspiring writers, working authors, and book-club regulars who like craft talk grounded in actual routines. It also suits anyone curious about how authors balance creative focus with promotion, deadlines, and daily life.
What sets it apart: Writer's Routine stands out by staying close to the mechanics of writing rather than treating authorship as a glamorous mystery. It keeps asking about time, place, planning, confidence, and revision until the guest's process becomes visible.
How do the best writers get to work? In every episode, we'll chat to an author about their writing day. Where do they work? What time do they start? How do they plan their time and maximise their creativity, in order to plot and publish a bestseller? Some are frantic night-owls, others roll out of bed into their desks, and a few lock themselves away in the woods - but none have a regular 9 to 5, and we'll find out how they've managed it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Writer's Routine makes historical fiction's construction legible through authors' accounts of research, character work, drafting and revision.
Writer's Routine asks authors to account for the practical decisions behind finished books. Dan Simpson keeps the conversation close to the working day: protecting deadline time, setting word-count targets, researching unfamiliar places, finding a character's voice and deciding…
A writer edits on an airplane; your own unfinished draft might feel less lonely.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A calm interview about confidence, critique, and the unglamorous work of writing.
This Writers Routine episode keeps its focus on the daily discipline of getting words onto the page. It favors craft over drama, though listeners hoping for a bigger literary showdown may find the tone intentionally restrained.
A working writer weighs daily momentum against the uncertain future of the novel.
Stig Abel turns a conversation about routine into a steadier reflection on momentum, moving from the pressure of a national breakfast radio job to the choice to keep pushing through the Jake Jackson books.
Elle McNichol makes the writer's calendar the real subject, and the strain comes through clearly.
This episode uses Elle McNichol, a four-time Carnegie Award-nominated author, to get at the reality behind the job title: staying with the writing when the day is already full.
A practical conversation about blocks, clean drafts, and keeping the page moving.
The piece keeps its attention squarely on the work of getting words onto the page. Its best stretches come from the talk of writing alongside author friends, shrinking the target to 200 words on difficult days, and giving a draft enough looseness to move past the fear of being…
Voice work, character work, and the slow business of getting inside a difficult character.
Farah Naz Rishi turns this Writer's Routine episode into something closer to a working session than a finished author showcase. The focus stays on how she finds a character through voice, then on the harder task of writing someone as difficult as Aiden in The Flightless Birds of…
A grounded career-pivot conversation about fear, writing habits, and the practical work behind a thriller career.
Catherine Stedman's turn toward thrillers comes through as less a grand reinvention than a practical response to a familiar professional fear: what happens when the roles ahead start to look smaller than the life behind them.
A practical look at the routines and work habits that keep Chioma Okorike moving.
Chioma Okorike's Writer's Routine appearance keeps its focus on Water Baby and on the habits that help her keep writing. Dan Simpson leans into practical questions about why she writes genre-less to explore, what she thinks her writing is for, and how she researches a location…
Henry Eliot walks Paris, Lisbon, and Cambridge to unlock classic novels with expert guests.
Kevin Young and a guest poet close-read one archival New Yorker poem per episode.
Dan Simpson interviews Chioma Okereke, author of 'Water Baby,' about her writing process.
Dan Simpson interviews Catherine Steadman, an actor turned bestselling thriller author, on Writer's Routine.
Writer's Routine talks with Annie Elliott about Mr.
Stig Abell says A Twist in the River is the fourth Jake Jackson novel, and he is already 60,000 words into the sixth while the fifth is nearly finished.
Writer's Routine speaks with Elle McNichol about her writing routine, her adult novel Unapologetic Love Story, and the systems she uses to keep draft zero moving in Microsoft Word.
Author Jane Dougherty discusses her novel 'Pasiphae', a reimagining of the Minotaur myth, and how living in the country influences her sensorial writing style.
Bestselling author Carmel Harrington discusses her writing journey, from early lack of plotting skills to mastering dialogue and secrets for her thriller 'The Nowhere Girls'.
Writer's Routine host Dan Simpson interviews Kate Dramis, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Curse of Saints fantasy trilogy, about her pivot to contemporary romance with The Odds of You—a novel she began writing on a plane to San Diego Comic-Con.
Writer's Routine host Dan Simpson interviews Farah Naz Rishi, author of The Flightless Birds of New Hope, about a writing process shaped by anxiety, voice acting, and deliberate emotional channeling.
Debut author Patrick Syms discusses his unique self-promotion strategy inspired by music white label releases and the importance of not being preachy in prose.
BAFTA-winning writer Guy Jenkin discusses his first novel 'Murder Most Foul' and the transition from sitcom writing to novel writing.
Author Lucy Foley discusses her writing routine, including quick first drafts and staying connected to her story daily.
Author Caitlin Davies discusses her shift from narrative nonfiction back to fiction, the challenges of writing, and strange writing advice she's received.
Bestselling historical fiction author Simon Scarrow discusses genre rules, research, and the importance of disciplined writing over waiting for inspiration.