Trust me. I know better than anyone how difficult it is to establish a writing routine. There’s always laundry to fold, dinner to make, or cats to pet. However, there’s absolutely no way I can get the ideas floating around in my head down onto paper unless I carve out the time to do so.
Finding the discipline and free time needed to turn your writing process into a consistent habit can be difficult, especially if you work full time and have a lot of responsibilities in your personal life. But, don’t despair. It’s possible to create a writing schedule that fits seamlessly into your daily life, getting you on track to accomplishing all of your writing goals.
Today, I will go over my top 7 tips for creating and maintaining a writing routine. Defeat procrastination and find your groove with writing as you put my advice into action.
1. Change Your Mindset
When you incorporate any new habit into your routine, you need to shift from a “finding time” to a “making time” mindset. Your life is hectic and there’s always some task to fill every pocket of time. There’s a huge difference between making time to write instead of just finding little snippets where you can sit down and focus.
Before you get started setting your routine, you need to figure out how much of a time commitment you’re willing to make to achieve your goals. If you have a great story idea that you want to turn into a novel, you need to schedule out dedicated chunks of time where you work on it.
Creating and sticking to a writing routine will tell yourself that you’re 100% committed to your goals. Even if you can only commit 20 minutes a day to writing, that’s enough to get the ball rolling.
2. Pick the Best Time of Day
Just like you schedule any other type of appointment, find the time of day that fits best into your schedule for writing. Try to set the same writing time each day if you can or as many days of the week that’ll work.
Writing early in the morning is great because your brain is fresh and you’re not bogged down with other things to do during the day. If you’re a night owl or it’s difficult for you to find the time before you head to work, buckling down to write after dinner might be better.
The important thing to keep in mind here is to do what’s best for you. If you need to adjust your writing time to later or earlier in the day depending upon your schedule, do that. Just stay consistent.
3. Add it to Your Calendar
When you schedule a doctor’s appointment, do you write it in your daily planner or add it to the calendar on your phone? Do the same thing with your writing schedule. Make a date with yourself to write.
Physically writing or logging your writing time into a planner or calendar makes it more official. You’ll feel obligated to keep the appointment with yourself if you’ve noted it down.
4. Keep Your Writing Time Sacred
Protect your writing time at all costs and don’t cave in to other distractions. These distractions can be people or things within your home, or even social engagements or meetings that pop up during your scheduled writing time. The time you slot to write needs to be for writing and nothing else.
Being lax and allowing other things to take priority over your writing will result in you regressing in your projects. It’ll also increase the likelihood that you won’t maintain your new schedule. Don’t allow anything to knock you off course, even if it’s yourself.
5. Have a Plan
When you sit down to write, you should know going in what you want to work on. While writer’s block is something that happens to every writer out there, you need to be prepared for it. You don’t want to spend your precious time staring at your computer screen or notebook.
For example, if you planned to work on the third chapter of your novel but are running into roadblocks, do some research instead. You want to use your writing block to write, but looking up images or details about upcoming events in your story could help give you the inspiration to go back to what you originally wanted to work on. You can also keep a list of writing prompts or do freewriting nearby for when you’re truly stuck.
6. Set Yourself Some Goals
It’s important to quantify your progress, even in writing. You can set yourself a word count goal per day or even for the entire week. Setting small, achievable goals will help you work toward your overarching goal.
Hitting a goal, no matter how small, gives us a little spark of energy. You feel good about what you’re doing when you know you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.
Say you want to have the first draft of your book done in six months. Looking at that goal by itself can be incredibly overwhelming. That’s why you need to break the word count down by month, week, and day.
Don’t forget, rewards are the best part of achieving goals. Cross items off your to-do list or calendar or print the pages you’ve written. Anything that gives you a sense of achievement will help you immensely.
7. Create a Dedicated Writing Space
My writing and work spaces are one and the same but having a separate area that’s just for me helps me immensely with my productivity. Your writing space doesn’t have to be a full home office. Mine is a desk set up in an area of my living room.
Even if it’s simply a comfy chair tucked into the corner of your bedroom, you need to create an area where you feel comfortable and that sparks your imagination. It’s also important for your writing sanctuary to be a spot where you won’t get interrupted by other people or distractions, but I know that’s hard to achieve.
Eliminate as many distractions as you can. Put on noise-canceling headphones or close the door, if you can. You should be able to focus, concentrate, and write while you’re in your writing space.
Stick to Your Writing Routine
Once you’ve created your writing routine, stick to it! You can make adjustments as needed to your routine once you see what does and doesn’t work, but you need to keep your momentum going. Stay committed to your writing routine while being flexible with the details.
Need some inspiration for your next writing session? Check out one of my posts on writing prompts.
