Welcome to My Writing Routine

Please know, going into this, I’m using the word routine rather lightly. I’m not someone who’s married to a strict schedule or do precisely the same tasks at the same time every workday. When I say routine, I’m really saying, “Hey, check out this skeleton I made that helps me get stuff done.”

Because people can be so different in their motivations and productivity, there is, for better or for worse, no one, prescribed structure for writers that can ensure peak output. Back in 2021, though, I did read the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Currey) to get a glimpse of what other creatives have done. It’s interesting, to me, to learn about others’ creative processes because I never know when I might come across something that either a.) inspires me to try something or b.) inspires me to pour more energy into what I know works for myself.

I saved one blurb from Daily Rituals, and, before I get into walking you through my own take on a “routine,” I want to leave it with you. It’s from novelist and short story writer Bernard Malamud, who said, “There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time—not steal it—and produce the fiction.”

He goes on to make the point that there’s not a “best way” to go about making the time, but that “[t]he real mystery to crack is you.”

So, as I was starting to get settled over here after our big move, I analyzed my past work experience, both from an academic as well as a professional viewpoint. What is it that I need to be productive? How do I self-motivate? And what needs to be true about my environment?

Here’s what I’ve come up with, in this season.

I count it a great luxury to be able to work from home, which is my current situation. I’m not someone who needs outside motivation or accountability to get my butt in gear and focus, so setting up at the dining room table has been just fine. Now that I’ve been reunited with my desk, though, you can bet 99% of the time I’ll be writing from there. From here, I should say, as that’s where I find myself now.

I’m trying to keep my working hours to be Monday through Friday during the day so that I can enjoy evenings and weekends with my husband. Striving to keep this balance is very important to me for a few reasons. The time I get to spend with boysy is invaluable, and it makes sense to make my workday coincide with when he’s away on base. 

A secondary reason is that, while I want to be a writer, I don’t want writing and producing words to be my whole life. Taking the time to breathe and step away from a project in meaningful ways helps me to sustain my creative energy. Plus, you best believe, what with living in Europe, I’m trying to be a Weekend Adventurer for sure.

What does a writing day look like, then, when I get down to it?

Well, it begins when boysy wakes up. I’ve never been in the habit of sleeping-in, plus his day doesn’t start too early. I putter about the kitchen while he gets ready, making sure he’s got breakfast and lunch. Often, I use this time to tidy the countertops and do some dishes. I may be up and at it, but I’m a slow mover in the mornings. If I can start out at a nice, easy pace and warm up to the day, that’s fine by me.

Once boysy heads off to base, I’ll spend some time in prayer, maybe go for a short walk about the neighborhood, and get around to making my own breakfast. Sometimes there are other chores I like to get a start on right away. Sometimes I sit down with my current read. I tell myself, though, that the writing needs to begin by 10am. 

Right now, I haven’t needed to do much thinking at the start of my writing time to consider what it is I’ll be working on. I have two primary projects I’m chipping away at— one that needs more attention than the other—so it’s usually clear where my focus needs to be. I like to make sure I have a full cup of coffee on-hand as well as enough water to last until noon. If I need any notes or character cards to tackle the scene I’ve got ahead of me, I take those out and keep them near. It’s never consistent whether I go right to a Google doc or require physical paper, but I’m prepared with both my laptop and notebook.

All that’s left is to actually begin. So, I do.

Depending on what housework needs attention, I may rise, after a time, from my chair to attend to those other tasks. I find those mini distractions helpful because I don’t want to be glued to my chair, physically inactive, for hours on end. I get a little mentally foggy, otherwise.

It’s nice to spend fifteen minutes mixing up and kneading bread dough. It’s nice to pop down to the basement and hang my clean clothes on the line to dry. I won’t say it’s nice to clean the bathroom, but it’s good to get up and take care of my home. When lunch time rolls around, I go for another walk and prepare something nourishing to eat. Then it’s back to work.

Currently, my daily word goal is 1,500 words, which comes out to 7,500 words per week. If you’ve ever participated in National Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you’ll know that’s a little below the goal they set in November to do 1,667 words a day, which adds up to 50,000 words by the end of the month. I’ve successfully completed NaNoWriMo a couple times in the past, and that daily goal was sometimes difficult to meet. I recognize that part of the challenge was holding down a job or two while trying to write, yet I thought setting my goal now to be near that number would be a good place to start as I’m laying this foundation.

Giving myself a realistic benchmark without applying too much pressure is important to me. I want to challenge myself, yet I don’t want the stress of meeting too high a goal to keep me from building momentum (starting out).

The routine I’ve been establishing is of a similar structure to how studying, for students, should be. If you want effective learning and retention, you don’t sit down for as long as it takes to cram in all the information; instead, you identify what needs your attention, and then you give yourself periodic breaks to let your brain breathe. For me, I’ve found this is how I need to approach my writing life.

How’s this routine been going for me, you wonder? 

There are days when I reach my daily word goal in two hours, and there are days when I end up writing until dinner. Whatever the case, I count it all as productivity, and I’m bringing my projects to life little by little. 

I’m also trying not to be too tied down to what I think is the “right” way for me to write. As Malamud said above, I need to be disciplined, so I must commit to something to keep me writing consistently. Yet, I’m often thinking about words from Mary Oliver and what she said in her book, Upstream (2016).

She says it’s a good idea, when advising young writers, to suggest they make and keep a writing schedule—then immediately goes on to say that’s only because it may unnerve them to know that they actually must be ready at all hours, any time, for a story to emerge and need writing. Ideas can be disorderly, unmanageable things at times. They don’t always arrive when, where, or how we expect them to. This is what writers must know, truly, and be ready for, if writing is the profession you want to pursue.

And being ready means you most certainly can have your writing routine, but you cannot expect that ideas will only find you when you’re perfectly situated at your desk with all your comforts and favorite notebook. That’s a neat, contained scenario, and Oliver wants aspiring writers to know that that’s now always going to yield stories of bold and great ideas.

“No one yet,” she writes, “has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.”

This is part of why, at the beginning, I wanted you to know that the word routine is a bit inaccurate for how I’m hoping to build my writing life. There’s no avoiding sitting down with some frequency and literally setting down sentences word-by-word.

But I want to not be found too stuffy and situated at my desk when an idea comes knocking at my door. I want to go out, live life, and observe things and people and places that spark story arcs in my mind. Then, when I’m ready, I want to make time—not steal it—and write all about the worlds inside my head. 

The more I grow as a writer the better I’ll understand how to strike that balance of spontaneity versus structure. For now, I’ve got my notebook, red pen, and plenty of projects to keep me going for a while.

Until next week, friends, and happy writing!