How Stephen King uses Deep Work
Cal Newport’s Deep Work was the most useful book I read last year and was responsible for a big increase in my work productivity and overall happiness.
Deep praise.
Eliminating distractions, slowly building concentration, and minimising shallow work, all helped me get the best out of my engineering and writing pursuits.
It took me four months to finish, but this is less to do with my enjoyment of the book, and more to do with how I consume my personal development. I choose to listen to the audio-book instead of the physical book and I only listen once a week, on my Monday afternoon walk from the office to the gym.
Because I drip feed myself personal development, to give myself the time to implement it, it also means I listen to several types of books in tandem. This lead to an interesting coincidence. While I was slowly getting through Deep Work, I was also listening to Stephen King’s autobiography/writing instructional, On Writing.
Stephen King goes into detail on his process for writing a novel and the mistakes a new writer might make. Although King’s book was published 16 years before Deep Work, I found some interesting cross-over between the two books.
Newport’s depth hypothesis is supported by his own prolific career as well as many, varied professionals he has interviewed. I liked the variety of people and careers referenced in relation to deep work and I would like to add a bonus example, Stephen King.
On Writing
Every biography has a turning point that distinguishes it from a story your neighbour could have told you. An event happens, on average, somewhere about a third of the way through that is extraordinary, that transforms a life from typical to something more.
As I read On Writing, I mentally catalogued the things that made Stephen different. Growing up he liked going to scary movies, he helped publish a newsletter with his brother Dave (called Dave’s Rag) but the thing that stood out to me was how poor he was. Raised by a single mother, money was always tight and King worked part-time jobs from an early age.
Working as a teacher in the 1970s and writing in his spare time, King had little more than a stack of rejection letters to show for his literary pursuits. At the time he was married, had two kids, an annual salary of just over $7000 and was too poor to live in town.
He had been sending his writing away to publishers since he was in high school with limited success. Savouring the few morsels of feedback he did receive was enough to keep him going. He wrote short stories and even a few novels, all in his spare time. Then came that rags to riches moment. Out of the blue one of his novels, Carrie, was published which came with a $2,500 advance.
Although this might not sound like much, to be paid for his passion meant a lot and with the money he promptly moved into town, bought a telephone and a second-hand car for his wife. Not overwhelmed by this sudden windfall he conservatively signed on for another year of teaching. King admits that Carrie quickly slipped from his mind as he was already working on his next book.
A month later, his agent called, the paperback rights for Carrie had just sold for $400,000, half of which would go to King. From living in a trailer park to suddenly receiving twenty-five times your annual salary is quite the acceleration.
From Dave’s Rag to riches
Chose an environment free from distractions
Stephen King got the most out of his spare time. That’s why it’s worth listening to him, he is both a successful worker and he has been where you and I are right now.
King’s first bit of advice is to work in a distraction free environment. The funny thing about this advice is that when he was writing Carrie, his environment doesn’t sound distraction free at all.
He lived in a trailer and the only room for him to write in was also the laundry but it had the only thing a writing space must have; a door you are willing to shut.
“The door closes the rest of the world out; it also serves to close you in and keep you focused on the job at hand.”
“The biggest aid to regular production is working in a serene atmosphere.”
“If possible, there should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.”
In addition to having a door you are willing to shut, King writes to heavy metal music. This is not because he likes to sit and listen to it, but because the loud music is just another way to keep the rest of the world out. His favourites are band are AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica.
I like to think he wrote his first novel with the regular thudding of a loose coin spinning in a dryer and grew accustomed to the sound.
When choosing a room to write in, as King suggests, it is best to choose a room without a window. When creating new worlds, it is best to eliminate as much of this one out of your mind as possible.
This chapter in King’s On Writing, reminded me of the person Cal Newport starts his book out by quoting, celebrated psychologist Carl Jung. Jung’s writing space was a study located within his lakeside ‘castle’ where he would retreat to for months at a time.
“In my retiring room I am by myself,”
“I keep the key with me all the time; no one else is allowed in there except with my permission.”
The distractions mentioned by Stephen King in On Writing are video games and TV but it’s easy to substitute the modern equivalents of social media and streaming services. The distractions have only become harder to ignore since 2000 but the idea of eliminating them while you work has remained the same.
Deep work scheduling
Choosing a depth philosophy is Cal Newport’s first step for implementing deep work. As it turns out, while many professionals have used deep work as a method, the timing and length of deep work varies greatly.
Some choose to squirrel themselves away for months of the year, some do a little bit of deep work everyday, some choose to disengage completely from shallow tasks such as email and socialising, and still others have such busy lives they grab small chunks of deep work when they can.
Of the four depth philosophies just described (bimodal, rhythmic, monastic, journalistic), Stephen King uses a combination of the bimodal and rhythmic methods and cautions against the monastic method.
Carl Jung, the typical bimodal deep worker, split his year between his isolated lakeside retreat and busy Zurich. Writing psychological papers and books required long blocks of solo time but in order to ferment the ideas that went into those pursuits, he needed clinical hours with patients and to discuss his ideas with his intellectual peers.
No man is an island, even if he would work best on one.
He had two modes of living, one that included deep work and one that didn’t. When he was in deep work, he was all deep work, all day, everyday until he wasn’t. The time spent in deep work was measured in months.
Like Jung, Stephen King appears to split his year into two different modes of work. When he starts a new book, he writes everyday for a period of roughly three months. Once the first draft is finished, King locks it in a desk draw for a minimum of six weeks. He then moves on to another small project or disconnects completely, either travelling or going fishing.
“And when I’m not working, I’m not working at all…”
What makes it hard to fully classify Stephen King as a bimodal worker is that he doesn’t meet the minimal length of time to qualify, one day. Although he writes everyday, he does not write all day. He starts at about nine and writes for about three to four hours, he has a strict goal of 2000 words and once that is met he stops.
When comparing King’s work day to a typical office worker, in terms of hours, it’s about half. But remember this is deep work, Carl Newport estimates that after your third block of 1.5 hours there are steep diminishing returns. If done right, 4.5 hours is a good amount of deep work.
Deep work is different to normal work because although it tends to be more enjoyable, it is also more draining. Cal Newport’s bar for deep work is that it has to be hard enough that a recent college graduate couldn’t be trained to do it in a few months.
Stephen King’s deep work is spent in pure creativity, turning a blank page into prose, and then into a commercially successful novel. This is well past what a recent college graduate is capable of.
But by God, will we keep trying.
So, King is not quite a perfect fit for the bimodal philosophy but he also doesn’t quite fit the rhythmic philosophy either. The example for the rhythmic philosophy employed in Deep Work is Brian Chappell, a doctoral candidate and father with a full-time job. Brian’s story from Deep Work:
“It was the glacial writing progress during this year that drove Chappell to embrace the rhythmic method. He made a rule that he would wake up and start working by five thirty every morning. He would then work until seven thirty, make breakfast, and go to work already done with his dissertation obligations for the day. Pleased by early progress, he soon pushed his wake-up time to four forty-five to squeeze out even more morning depth.”
This philosophy is mostly used by those looking to pursue a project on the side. I use this philosophy myself, writing for 30 minutes from 2:00 to 2:30 every workday. What’s different with King is that he doesn’t do deep work on the side anymore, he turned professional.
The monastic philosophy is all about identifying shallow work and eliminating it. Social media, speaking engagements, emails, and attending conferences are all examples of shallow activities.
King would not agree with this philosophy because he believes that the product of his deep work isn’t as important as living a full life.
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
Deep work makes you happy
When I was a kid, I dreaded becoming an adult because as I would complain to my Nan, “adults only got four weeks off a year”. I loved holidays and knew how to enjoy them. According to Cal Newport, as adults we might not enjoy them as much as we think.
“When measured empirically, people were happier at work and less happy relaxing than they suspected.”
“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
Stephen King has written 66 novels, 5 non-fiction books (including On Writing), 11 collections (short stories mostly), and 20 screenplays since 1974. That’s a lot of deep work and it’s very hard to imagine he was doing it all against his will. For a dry, matter-of-fact writer, his love of what he does comes through in On Writing.
“For me, not working is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good.”
It might be tempting to attribute King’s happiness to the fact he is doing his dream job but Cal Newport argues it’s just as much about how we work, as it is about what we work on.
A passion for making up stories certainly kept King working at his dream longer than others but passion can’t be sustained forever. I think the key to King’s sheer volume of work is that he found a way to enjoy the process.
Kathryn Joyce is attributed to having said, “we all have a book in us”. I certainly think I do and I think I would be happy writing it, but it’s not the only work I would be happy doing.
Conclusion
Stephen King writes the entire first draft of a book in 3 months, to build up and keep momentum he writes every day. Although I doubt he uses the term himself, I believe he has found a work formula that is based around deep work.
In a joint interview, George RR Martin and Stephen King once had this exchange:
Stephen King: Is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask me?
George RR Martin: Yes, yes there is something I want to ask you.
Stephen King: Alright.
George RR Martin: How the f**k do you write so many books so fast?
Deep work my friends, deep work.
Thank you for reading,
James Greene
