Octavia E. Butler's Daily Routine

Octavia E. Butler wrote Kindred and the Parable novels, won Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Before Kindred came out in 1979 she paid the bills with what she called "horrible little jobs", from washing dishes to inspecting potato chips. This page shows those day-job years, when she wrote in the middle of the night.

The American Scholar describes her waking by 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM to spend time on the page before her pay-the-bills work. Her journals set a minimum of 4 hours of writing a day, as A Narrative of Their Own notes. She told Joan Fry in 1997 that she got up early, wrote, went to work, and spent the last few hours of the day on automatic.

It's for anyone building something serious around a job that pays the rent: your best hours go to your own work before anyone else can claim them. It is an extreme schedule that only works with a very early bedtime, so take it as a model of commitment rather than a sleep plan. Job hours, the commute, meals, bedtime and the weekend are our estimates.