Some writers live by the routine. Others abhor them. Both are correct.

Charles Yu, the imaginative stylist of Interior Chinatown and the series Westworld, told PBS that he appreciates the importance of non-writing time:

What I do is try to frame a question or idea in a useful or interesting way, set my subconscious to work on it, and then check back later to see if there’s been progress,” Yu said. He likens the process to when a computer has programs running in the background — you might not see the central processing unit in action, but every once in a while you might get an update from the progress bar. The same thing happens when he takes time away from writing, he said: “Ding, update from your brain: ‘here’s a sentence that might be interesting.'”