Hunter S. Thompson’s daily routine is enticing to many: as a writer, he was both brilliant and prolific, the two traits that rarely come together. The father of gonzo journalism and author of bestselling novels, Thompson seemed to have discovered all the secrets of writing. Not a bad skill to acquire, right? Although, unfortunately, his crazy routine might not be one most people can – or should – copy, there’s something we all can take away from his famed “process”.
Hunter S. Thompson: Daily Routine of a Gonzo Writer
Here you won’t see the infamous Hunter Thompson’s daily routine with cocaine and coffee. It is quoted by everyone because eccentricity gets clicks, but the whole thing is fiction. It first appeared in E. Jean Carroll’s book titled Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson. Paying homage to Thompson’s legacy, Carroll injected fictional events into her “biography”. She wrote about the person Hunter S. Thompson wanted to appear to the public, a rock star in publishing.
The real daily routine of Hunter S. Thompson has been described by his close friend and ranch caretaker Jay Cowan in his (much less sensationalized) book Hunter S. Thompson: An Insider’s View of Deranged, Depraved, Drugged Out Brilliance.
According to Cowan, Thompson would stay up late and sometimes pull all-nighters. He loathed deadlines, sometimes ignoring them altogether. Nevertheless, he would write obsessively, preferring a packed room with lots of instant feedback to a quiet office – and he loved reading out loud (he would have loved Scripter). While drugs and alcohol were definitely on the table, Thompson liked to write while he was (almost) sober – and take notes in the hundreds.
The Mysterious Writing Process
I hate writing. It’s pure hell and I wish I didn’t have to do it. – Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson was a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. When he decided to become a writer (and it was a conscious decision), he also decided to learn the trade. In Thompson’s eyes, the only obvious course of action was to type up The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms. Both on an ancient typewriter. Fitzgerald, multiple times. At work.
If you type out somebody’s work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it’s like music. – Hunter S. Thompson
Is it a good method? Surprisingly, yes. It helps you understand any text in a way reading cannot.
As for the method Thompson developed when his writing matured, we can consult Jay Cowan and Thompson’s own correspondence (God bless, he wrote hundreds of letters as part of his daily routine).
First of all, Hunter S. Thompson would churn out notes at the slightest provocation. It was “an amount of paper only an arsonist could love”, accumulating in his basement like nuclear waste.
He generated so many notes on everything, from needing lightbulbs to finding the best hotel room in Las Vegas to quotes from movies and newspapers, that is was a serious task just to store it all.
Stewing for a while was another important part of Thompson’s process. He once spent two years riding with the Hells Angels to immerse himself in the story. Sometimes he would simply procrastinate, claiming deep thinking. Writing in bursts was his core principle. According to Thompson himself, he “valued the peaks”. A bit hypocritical, considering Thompson seemed to write at any available moment, be it letters or telegrams or articles, and using any surface available, even the walls.
For his first forays into a story, Hunter took what he called “practice runs” at it, banging out several thousand words at a go just to get in the right frame of mind […] Often whole chunks of those riff would remain as the core of the structure, while he figured out how best to organise the final edifice.
To Hunter S. Thompson, a story had layers. It was his own wild way to draft and edit.
Hunter was obviously choosy about his words […] and they were gathered into his work in a layering process. He put basics on paper in his unique voice from the beginning, then added the details in subsequent drafts. […] The two version of his galley edits he gave me of the Pulitzer story reveal more about his approach. They are on oversized paper […] with a single formatted column down the middle of each. This allowed Hunter to cut and paste (literally, back then), changing the order of sections multiple times.
And if that is not enough to convince you that Hunter S. Thompson was a very special kind of person, consider that he “kept copies” of every letter, note, and draft he had ever created or received.
While you are free to draw your private conclusions, here are our main takeaways on how Thompson’s method might help writers, journalists, and content creators:
-
The power of petty motivation. It doesn’t matter what drives you as long as it works.
-
Copy the greats to learn from them. Just don’t forget to develop your own voice along the way.
-
Taking a break is fine. Taking multiple breaks is also fine.
-
Do not stop writing. If you feel stuck, go write something else.
-
Take a lot of notes.
More like this:
