He worked for a few years freelancing from Delhi and Dehradun. He sustained himself financially by writing short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. On his youth, he said, "Sometimes I got lucky and some got selected and I earned a few hundred rupees. Since I was in my 20s and didn’t have any responsibilities I was just happy to be doing what I loved doing best." In 1963, he went to live in Mussoorie because besides liking the place, it was close to the editors and publishers in Delhi. He edited a magazine for four years. In the 1980s, Penguin set up in India and approached him to write some books. He had written "Vagrants in the Valley" in 1956, as a sequel to "The Room on the Roof". These two novels were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993. The following year a collection of his non-fiction writings, "The Best of Ruskin Bond" was published by Penguin India. His interest in supernatural fiction led him to write popular titles such as "Ghost Stories from the Raj", "A Season of Ghosts", and "A Face in the Dark and other Hauntings". Since then he has written over five hundred short stories, essays and novels, including "The Blue Umbrella", "Funny Side Up", "A Flight of Pigeons" and more than 50 books for children. He has also published his autobiography: "Scenes from a Writer's Life" describes his formative years growing up in Anglo-India and a further autobiography, "Lone Fox Dancing", was published in 2017. "The Lamp is Lit" is a collection of essays and episodes from his journal.