Anne Rice didn't write in tidy daily increments. When a book had her, she disappeared into it for days at a stretch, and she was candid about what that actually cost her.
Twelve Hours, Day After Day
Where a lot of working novelists protect a modest, sustainable daily word count, Rice's method looked more like a binge than a routine once she was fully into a project. She'd choose a stretch of time with minimal outside distractions and then commit to it fully, treating the writing less like a job with hours and more like a state to disappear into for as long as it took.
I choose a time when there will be minimal distractions and then I throw myself into the writing, working in 12 hour shifts day after day.
Anne Rice, from her official FAQ
Twelve hours is a long session by any writer's standard, and for Rice it was closer to a default mode than a rare, exceptional push before a deadline, something she settled into once a book had real momentum. The five weeks she spent writing Interview with the Vampire in 1973 fits this pattern exactly, an intense, compressed burst rather than a slow accumulation of pages over months.
The Cost of Working This Way
Rice didn't dress this up as sustainable or recommend it without qualification. She described real physical consequences that came with pushing this hard for this long, and she was specific about them rather than treating the intensity as purely romantic.
By her own description, the stretches cost her real sleep and left her keyed up in a way she called slightly manic, and finishing a novel after weeks like that could leave her too wired to sleep for days afterward. That reads like an honest account of what worked for her personally, at a real cost, rather than a method she'd frame as a model for every writer. The immersive, marathon style produced the results she wanted. It also asked a lot of her, every time.
For the fuller day-to-day picture, including her setup once she sat down, see the full Anne Rice writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Match your session length to your project's momentum. Some books respond better to sustained immersion than to steady daily increments.
- Clear real distractions before a marathon session. Rice's twelve-hour shifts depended on minimizing everything competing for her attention.
- Be honest about the cost. She didn't pretend the intensity was free. Lost sleep and exhaustion were part of the deal she made with herself.
- Know this method isn't for every writer. Rice's approach worked because it matched how she operated, not because it's the correct way to write a novel.