Gustave Flaubert's Daily Routine

Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary, the 1857 novel that got him tried for offending public morals and acquitted. His writing routine rested on a maxim: be regular and orderly in your life so you can be violent and original in your work. At Croisset, his mother's house on the Seine, one day was much like the next.

He woke at 10:00 AM and rang his bell cord, and only then could the household speak above a whisper. He could not work on a full stomach, so he ate lightly an hour later, walked with the family and, from 1853, spent an hour teaching his niece Caroline. Then came the round writing table: first through the afternoon until dinner, and again from 9:30 PM into the night, a day Mason Currey first set out on his Daily Routines blog.

It's for people who write or build best in long, deep sessions and can arrange the rest of the day around them. It suits night owls, and anyone whose household will agree on quiet hours.

You get a day that runs itself, so the desk gets your full attention. Few of us can write 10.5 hours, so try one long afternoon session and one evening one. The late-night finish is our estimate, since in 1852 he told Louise Colet he stopped at 1:00 AM.