Ian Fleming created James Bond.
He was also a Professional Life Enjoyer.
His daily routine is something we can all learn from.
In 1946, Ian Fleming purchased a piece of land in Jamaica with a private beach and hired a contractor to build a house with a first class view of the pristine Caribbean sea.
He named the house Goldeneye.
On 17 February 1952 Fleming began writing the first James Bond novel from his Goldeneye estate.
The name of the novel is Casino Royale.
Here is Fleming’s routine:
He began each day with a morning dip in the Caribbean sea followed by a hearty breakfast with his wife Ann.
Breakfast was always scrambled eggs, bacon and black coffee. Fleming drank coffee because he believed tea tasted like mud and caused the decline of the British Empire.
At 9am, after kissing Ann, he would leave the breakfast table and go inside the main living room of Goldeneye where he had a desk in the corner by the windows. He would pull out his Imperial typewriter and write for the next three hours.
At noon, he would stop writing and walk barefoot into the warm Jamaican sun. There, he would meet up with Ann and go down to his private beach to sunbathe and swim before lunch.
After lunch, he would take a 1-2 hour royal afternoon nap.
At around 5pm, he would return to his desk in the main living room of the Goldeneye estate and spend an hour or so going over what he had written earlier in the day. After making his corrections, he would take the type-written papers and place his manuscript in the left-hand drawer of his desk.
This daily routine, which Fleming followed for the next dozen years, led him to write a total of twelve James Bond novels and two short story collections.
In a speech he gave to students at Oxford, Ian fleming had this to say about his writing process:
“Say whatever you want, research it properly, and write fast. Never look back. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain.”