Establishing Daily Routines for Effective Writing

My wife is always teasing me about how structured my days are. “It’s 8:30, time for Rick to grab breakfast, then go to his office and work.”

“It’s eleven o’clock, time to work out.”

“We don’t always have to eat dinner at five.”

But for me these routines are important in helping me manage my day. It’s critical that we establish routines in our daily lives so as not to become overwhelmed with all of the mundane tasks that occupy our days. I know a few people who are so disorganized that they act surprised when it’s time to go to work, as if that moment were a wild beast quietly sneaking up on them.

You probably know a few in your own life. Those people who are never on time and can’t really be relied upon to be where they promise they will be.

“I’m sorry, was that today?” They’ll tell you even though they had known about the appointment for than a month and had been reminded periodically. There is a certain subset of society who likes to blame this on a new phenomenon called Time Blindless. Of course, I’m old school and willing to call it what it is. Laziness. But that’s a subject for another time and place.

Today I want to talk about writing and routine, and why a routine is important in not only writing, but in every aspect of a person’s life. Routine provides a structure to your day, a roadmap if you will that guides you through the myriad events of your day, ensuring you meet your own expectations and arrive on time at any appointments you may have scheduled.

When I served in the military punctuality was drilled into us relentlessly. “If you’re ten minutes early you’re on time. If you’re on time you’re late.” Unfortunately, command had a totally different idea as to what was considered on time.

We had another saying in the military that tied neatly into the first. “Hurry up and wait.” It was not unusual to get the order to move out at 0600, 6am for those not familiar with military time, yet we’d all be sitting around in the staging area come 9am waiting for someone to pull their foot out of their ass so we could get going.

It’s a good thing this was in training and there was not a friendly force out there somewhere desperately holding on waiting for us to show up with a promise to roll at dawn. Of course, most would not have expected the unit to move when promised anyway. Yet, somehow, we have managed to maintain our place as a reigning superpower.  

And here I’m going off on another tangent. The real reason behind all this is that I should have had this finished and uploaded to my blog yesterday. But here I am at 8:53 am ET, writing this post. Sorry.

As for writing, creating, or learning a new process it’s important to structure your day around your goals. When you establish a time and place, and stick to it, you’re telling yourself that this is the time and place where I will write. At first it might seem counterproductive to restrict your writing to a certain time and place, but it’s important to do so as you will train your body, and your mind to be ready to create at that time. At first you may end up browsing the web, or writing a late blog post, but you’re forcing yourself to concentrate on writing at this time.

That doesn’t mean you can’t brainstorm the rest of the day. Most of us gather material for our work from our daily interaction. Writing down ideas, and thoughts throughout your day will help you store them for when you cam sit down to write.

How many have heard the excuse. “I can’t write unless my muse is speaking to me, or they’re inspired to create.”   

When you train yourself to write at a certain time and place you’ll be amazed to learn how easily it comes to you with a little practice. So be patient. Even if you only have an hour a day or can only manage a hundred words. That’s a hundred words that weren’t there before. A hundred words a day can add up, that’s 3000 words a month, which is the length of a typical short story. In one hundred days a hundred words a day will net you 10,000 words. Are they perfect words? Likely not, but everyone starts somewhere.

What you’ll find when you start focusing your efforts is your word count for that hour can climb. Right now, as I’m writing this post it has been twenty-five minutes since I started and I’ve managed to put down 778 words to this point. They’re not completely clean by any stretch of the imagination, but within the next half an hour I’ll have a finished post that hopefully you’re reading right now.

Tell me about your process. Do you have a set time and place to write, or create? Or do you take the scattered approach and grab what time you can spare throughout the day?