Tana French has never published a strict daily schedule: no fixed wake time, no word count target. What she has described, across interviews, is the shape of how the work actually happens.
Built in Stolen Time
Before she was a novelist, French worked for about a decade as a professional actor, trained at Trinity College Dublin, taking roles in theatre, film, and voiceover. The idea for In the Woods came to her during a summer job on an archaeological dig near a wooded site, a day job she was doing between acting gigs in her early 30s. By her own account, she worked on the book, on paper, in the lulls between castings for close to two years.
I was actually turning down acting work to finish this thing.
Tana French, Irish Times, 2024
That line, from a 2024 Irish Times interview, is the closest thing she's given to a marker of when writing stopped being a side project. Actors don't turn down paid work lightly. Once she started doing it regularly, the novel had become the priority, without a contract or a deadline forcing the decision.
No Fixed Structure, Even Now
That original, schedule-free way of working seems to have stuck. In the same interview, French said structure 'doesn't come easily' to her, that she's 'not one of those people who will naturally see the arc' of a book in advance. She's described being 'extremely jealous' of writers who have every chapter plotted before they start, because they carry a certainty about the shape of the story she says she's never had. Her output follows the pace of discovery drafting rather than a calendar: her novels have arrived anywhere from about one to four years apart since In the Woods came out in 2007, a gap that tracks with how much rewriting each book demanded.
See the full Tana French writing routine for how that process connects to her acting background and Dublin settings.
What You Can Steal
- Use the time you actually have. French wrote her first novel in the gaps of a working actor's schedule, not in ideal, uninterrupted stretches.
- Watch for the moment it becomes the priority. Turning down other work is a real signal that a project has moved from hobby to commitment.
- Let your pace follow the draft, not a calendar. Her publication gaps vary because the rewriting varies. A rigid deadline isn't the only way to finish a book.
- Stop waiting for structure to feel natural. French says it never has for her, and she's finished ten novels anyway.