Naomi Novik

The Temeraire author sometimes needs to set something on fire…

What is your daily writing routine like?

It changes radically depending on where I am in the book. Sometimes I go through periods where I’m systematically writing at the same time each day, making steady progress, but there’s also a lot of fallow time where I’m not writing but a lot of stuff is happening in the back of my head. Then when I can dedicate a solid week or two to writing and get a lot of flow, that’s when I get huge word counts. My only routine in those weeks is “ignore everything else and write” and my email goes unanswered and all my food is take-out.

Describe the room in which you typically write.

I often write in my office at home, with a big monitor and an ergonomic set-up. But a lot of times I have a laptop and I go somewhere. The one thing that I almost always have around is a cup of tea.