dumas and some thoughts about the writing routine

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dumas lately because we’re reading The Count of Monte Cristo in the book club. The man–Dumas—was a force of nature. Waking up at 5 a.m., sitting down to write as if the words couldn’t wait. There’s something crazy about that kind of commitment, you know what I mean? Showing up, day in, day out, to create. Dumas didn’t wait for inspiration, he called it to him.

And maybe that’s the secret. Writing isn’t about waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect idea, or the perfect sentence. It’s about showing up, even when you don’t feel ready. They say Dumas had this incredible routine: morning was for fresh pages, pouring out stories like water from a never-ending fountain. Afternoon was for shaping, for chiseling away at what he’d written. He knew the power of momentum, of building something piece by piece, bird by bird–like Anne Lamont said—, trusting that if you do the work, at some point the story will reveal itself.

I think we forget that sometimes. Or most times, I don’t know. We get caught up in the almost inevitable pressure to make everything perfect the first time. But here’s Dumas, writing some of the greatest adventures ever told, with deadlines breathing down his neck. And yet, he wasn’t afraid to write messy. Because he knew he’d come back later to polish it. There’s so much freedom in that realization. You can write without fear. You don’t have to nail it on the first try.

I recommended Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg today on Instagram because of that, she encourages us to try and try again and fail without being afraid of that.

And let’s talk about his style. There’s a lesson in those long, winding sentences of his. They’re not just words; they’re a rhythm. A movement. His prose has a pulse, like it’s alive. Dumas understood that storytelling isn’t just about what happens next—it’s about how you feel it happening. That’s something I want to bring into my own work, that sense of flow. Even when try to make my sentences short and snappy, I also try to make them breathe. I want them to stretch out and take up space with their meanings and rhythms. There’s power in that, in letting your writing flow that way.

You know what else strikes me about Dumas? He knew how to create worlds. Not just with plot or character, but with detail. The weight of a single object in his story—the treasure chest, the ring, a disguise—becomes monumental. He wasn’t just filling space with descriptions. Every detail was a doorway into the world he was building. And isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Create a world so real, so rich, that readers feel like they can walk through it?

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: Dumas wasn’t some literary god who had it all figured out from the start. He worked for it. He wrote for it. He was prolific because he had to be. He had bills to pay, a lifestyle to maintain. He didn’t write because he was waiting for the muses to descend from the heavens—he wrote because it was his job, his calling, his life. And maybe that’s the most important lesson: you don’t wait for inspiration. You create it. You wake up, you write, and you trust that the words will come.

So, when I think about Dumas—about his routine, his discipline, his craft—I feel this surge of energy. It’s like he’s reminding me that writing is about persistence. It’s about believing that every day you sit down to write, you’re building something bigger than you realize. You’re creating momentum. You’re weaving threads that, with time, will become something extraordinary.

We all want to write our own Count of Monte Cristo, don’t we? Maybe not in terms of length or complexity, but in terms of legacy. A work that stands the test of time. And the truth is, that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because we make the choice—again and again—to show up, to write, and to let the story unfold, no matter how many drafts it takes.

That’s what Dumas teaches us. That’s the fire he brings. And if we can tap into even a fraction of that energy, that drive—imagine what we could create. So here’s to writing boldly, without fear. Here’s to letting the story take us places we didn’t expect. And here’s to trusting that, like Dumas, if we keep going, we’ll get there.