How to Build an Effective Writing Routine
Everybody thinks writing is easy until they try to do it. From a theoretical standpoint, it sounds easy. You just sit at the keyboard and type. So how hard can it be? Well, if you are an author, traditionally published, self-published, or pre-published, you know exactly how difficult it is.
Writing a manuscript, fiction or non-fiction, requires an extraordinary amount of creative focus, intentional blocks of time, and sheer, stubborn will. Even if you’re writing something that’s on the low end of the expectations of your genre as far as word count goes, we’re still talking more than 50,000 words. That’s a lot of words.
If all you had to do as an indie author was to write, you’d be golden, but as an indie author, you have to wear every hat in the publishing process. You’re not just the writer, you’re the publisher, the agent, the tech person, the accountant, the marketing guru, and the publicist. Beyond that, you have to diversify your income if you want to make enough to keep writing. And on top of all of it, you have to keep churning out word count in order to put out more books.
It sounds impossible, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not impossible, but it takes effort and focus and determination. But more than anything, it requires boundaries. If you aren’t able to set priorities in your life as an author, you’re going to struggle. So today we’re going to talk through some strategies I’ve used to develop and maintain a writing routine that actually works for me, and I hope you can use these guidelines to do the same for yourself.
My debut released in June 2014, and since then I’ve written and published more than 20 other books in varying genres. Some of those have been through traditional presses, but many of them have been as an indie author. I haven’t always gotten it right, and I’m always willing to tell folks what I did wrong in hopes of helping them avoid the potholes along the path to publishing.
Writing doesn’t happen by itself
If you don’t make time in your schedule to put your backside in a chair and pound the keys on a word processor, your book won’t happen. You can’t snap your fingers and magically produce a saleable manuscript. I don’t care how advanced A.I. gets or how lax our standards as a culture become, no story worth its ink just happens.
Stories require time and effort and imagination and sacrifice.
That means, you can’t just expect for a writing routine to happen during your normal day. You have to schedule it. You have to block the time out, and once you block it out, you have to protect it.
It never fails. The moment you set time to write in your calendar, something else will try to take its place, especially if you are a Christian author writing in obedience to the Lord’s call on your life. Every time.
But if you believe that what you are doing is what you are called to do, you need to make it a priority in your life. You need to guard that time specifically for your creativity. If you don’t, nothing will happen. Nothing will change until you take action to change it yourself.
Depending on the life season you’re in, this may be a challenge, and it may require some flexibility. But even if you only have an hour a week to write, block it off. Protect that time. Make the most of the hour you have.
Writing is a habit
When we talk about muscle memory, we use examples like riding a bicycle or driving a car. Those are examples of physical prowess that becomes so ingrained in our minds that it’s like second nature. We just do it. But what those examples neglect to mention is what it takes to reach a place of mastery of those skills.
No kid jumps on a bicycle and can effectively pull a wheelie or do wild stunts in mid-air the same day. No driver gets behind the wheel for the first time and can take a sharp corner at high speed on the same day. It takes practice. It takes routine. It takes time to develop mastery of any skill, and writing is no different.
The first day you start your writing routine, don’t expect to crank out ten thousand words. Don’t even expect to do half that. You might only write 500 words. You might write less than that. And you know what? That’s okay. You wrote words. That’s the point.
The second day, write that same amount. The third day, do it again. Maybe that doesn’t sound effective, but 500 words a day adds up at the end of the month.
You can’t expect yourself to master the art and skill of storytelling if you haven’t been doing it consistently for years and years. Your drafts are going to be messy. The characters are going to be flat. Your stories might go in circles or drag in places. That’s okay. Let them. You’re getting words on the page, and that is the very definition of what a writer does.
Write in a dedicated space
Once you have set your dedicated writing time for your writing routine, the best next step you can take is to set up a dedicated writing space. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be a closet. It can be your bedroom. It can be the front seat of your car while you’re waiting to pick up a kid from school. Wherever. Just pick a place and make that spot your Creative Refuge.
If you can disconnect yourself from the internet in that place, you will do yourself a tremendous favor. Of course, that means you’ll need to do all your research ahead of time, but that way you won’t be tempted to gallivant off on some rabbit trail on social media or Wikipedia or any of the other research sites that love to capture our attention. Reduce distractions as much as possible.
If you live with family, ask them to respect your time and space. If that’s not possible, there may be other solutions, but do everything you can to set aside a place to write.
Write with reasonable expectations
Congratulations! You’re on your way to having an effective writing routine! Once you’ve made the time to write and built the habit of getting into the writing zone and setting up your dedicated writing space, all that’s left to do is write. Let your fingers dance across the keyboard. Let your imagination run wild.
And once your dedicated writing time is up, you can happily sit back and enjoy your completed novel after a single day’s effort.
Ha. Not even close.
Even the fastest, cleanest, most experienced authors I know can’t write an effective novel in a day. And they certainly can’t write and publish it in a day.
It doesn’t matter how disciplined your habits are or how fast you write or how organized you are, you can’t expect yourself to do it all. You must learn to set reasonable expectations, or you will burn yourself out.
After you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll know what your limit is. You’ll know where to set the boundaries of your expectations, and that’s good because that means you’ll know how hard to push yourself. If you’re the sort of writer who can write ten thousand words in a day, awesome. Aim for twelve thousand. If you’re the sort of writer who struggles to get 500 words in a day, that’s fantastic. You know that, so that means you can work toward doing better. Aim for 600 words.
Or maybe you don’t work with word count at all. Maybe you write a scene at a time. That’s wonderful! Write a scene and take a break. Write another scene and take another break. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole chapter.
Or if you write a chapter at a time, do that. However you need to set your goals, set them. If you don’t have a target, it’s a lot easier to let your deadlines slide.
Write, rest, and repeat
After you’ve gotten into the habit of writing regularly, it’s very easy to forget to take breaks: don’t. You need to give your creative brain a break, otherwise it might spontaneously combust. I prefer to use the 50-Minute Focus plan, where I write for 50 minutes and take a break for ten minutes. This allows me to work on laundry, straighten up areas of the house, or just run through some brief stretches in between my writing times.
You’d be shocked at what you can get done in ten minutes.
Invest the time to develop a routine that works for you. Set boundaries around the times you want to be creative and guard them so that you have the opportunity to develop healthy writing habits. Set goals that are reasonable and achievable for you. Make a space for yourself where you can be creative in an uninterrupted capacity. And then, be equally intentional about taking care of your mind, your body, and your soul through regular breaks and refreshing movement.
You can write the book that’s in your heart. You can even write the next book too. But if you want to do it in a way that’s healthy, first build a writing routine that will work for you.
Bio and Links:
A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. Author of 17 books, she keeps her fiction readers laughing with wildly imaginative adventures about samurai superheroes, clumsy church secretaries, and goofy malfunctioning androids; her non-fiction readers just laugh at her and the hysterical life experiences she’s survived. If that’s your cup of tea (or coffee), join the fun at www.amycwilliams.com.