Writing Routines

 Routine and ritual are a recipe for achieving flow. Flow is that state where time and effort seem to disappear. It's where deep work happens. It isn't proof against struggling. I have a regularly scheduled writing time. 8AM every weekday morning. I show up every weekday morning and open the WIP. 

It isn't a guarantee of success, though. It's down to intention, drive, and determination. That being the case, in no way to I advocate for writing every day. I do advocate for doing what works for you. I am learning that an hour in the morning is not necessarily the best way for me to work. I need much longer stretches of time. Four hours seems to be the sweet spot. I need that much time to get immersed in my stories and characters. It really seems that my continuity sense is dependent on that much time. Because there's a day job now in the mix and the care of aging parents, this means that I have to be a weekend warrior. I use my weekday morning sessions to wrap my head around where the story is going - to make notes about what scenes I want and need so I can jump in on the weekends. 

You'd think that four hours on the weekend would be easy to come by. You'd be wrong. Turns out, my family seems to think my weekends are for chores. ALL THE CHORES. A house full of people and cats needs a ton of maintenance and upkeep. I'm the only person in the family who goes up ladders. Or who handles power tools of any size. 

Most of the time, I get around the demands of family life by getting up at 5AM and working until 9AM. I usually get two hours before anyone else in the house begins stirring. Then it's another two hours of telling people to hush up and hold whatever they want to tell me, ask me, remind me, etc until after 9AM. It's a new routine which means that the boundaries are still being tested. I'm trying really hard to stand firm. Really hard. But like Jeffe, I'm dealing with family drama - same kind she is - an aging parent who's very ill and in the hospital at the moment. We're still finding out whether this will be something the parent in question can survive. So it's possible this weekend the boundaries will crumble under the pressure. 

And you know what? Fine. 

This too shall pass and then I get back up on the horse. I suspect that's the real secret. You're a writer no matter whether you write every day or grab snippets of word count when you can. Life is going to get in the way. Persistence and coming back over and over to the page is what matters. Keep coming back.

Writing Habits and Work-Life Balance

 

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re discussing work ethic and asking each other what we do to keep balanced and writing regularly?

Many of you already know I’m kind of a fiend for building a writing habit. That’s because, once I stopped resisting the idea and starting doing it – by writing every day at the same time every day – that habit carried me through all sorts of difficulties.

It still does.

For example, I’m on a plane as I type this, heading to WorldCon in Chicago. I was reading a novel (Lisa Klepas, Marrying Winterborne, highly recommend!) as the plane taxied and took off. Once we reached cruising altitude, I began to feel the prodding of habit. “Time to write!” it urges. So, I pulled out the laptop to write this blog post. Then I’ll turn to my draft of Shadow Wizard, which I need to get done.

Yes, I write every (weekday) morning. That’s how I can count on getting the book done.

Last week I visited family and there were many family goings on. There was some emotional stuff to deal with, aging parents and all that involves, and it threw me for the remainder of the week. I wasn’t productive. I was feeling stressed. I’d been knocked out of my routine by life, which is the way of life. It would be nice (in theory) if I lived in some hermitage or remote villa where all days flowed by as serene as my view of the Mediterranean Sea, but I don’t. I live in a beautiful place (no ocean) and my life is relatively even and peaceful, but I’m connected to people and life happens.

By the following Monday, I was able to slide back into my writing habit like a pair of comfortable yoga pants. Morning writing was waiting for me, restoring the necessary balance. It felt good. That’s the beauty of habit – it does all the hard work for you.

My Secret Weapon: a Writing Habit

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Writing through your Achilles heel - How do you keep writing through [whatever it is that prevents/stops your writing]?"

I think I was supposed to fill in my particular [whatever it is that prevents/stops your writing], but I don't think I have a specific Achilles heel that way. Not that I don't encounter obstacles to getting my words in every day! There are multitudes of those things, from Stupidly Trivial to Truly Important. When I was a newbie writer, even the Stupidly Trivial stuff won all the time. These days, only the Truly Important stuff gets in the way of writing, and even then I bounce back quickly, all because of my secret weapon.

My secret weapon is: my writing habit.

I'm a huge fan of building a writing habit. Because I've spent the last twenty years developing a writing habit, it's so refined now, so solidly at the center of my daily life, that writing almost happens of its own accord.

Sometimes, sure, I have to fight the megrims, the tooth-pulling days, the sheer don'-wannas - but the writing habit has me at my desk, writing anyway. Even if I take a deliberate sick or vacation day, I feel weird not writing, because the habit is tugging at me. I feel like something is missing until I get back to it.

Human beings are creatures of habit - both good and bad. Habit takes over when we're not deliberately working against it. We all have bad habits we'd like to kick - and know from experience how freaking hard that is to do! Why not take advantage of this force of nature and our deepest selves, and build a good habit that's hard to break?

Building a solid writing habit is the best thing I ever did, which is why I emphasize it in my Author Coaching Services. 

But you can do it on your own! Find a time when you can write at the same time, every day, even if for only five minutes. Or one. I know it's super hard to carve out that time. When I started doing this, the only time I could find was at 5am - and I am NOT a morning person. But I wanted to build a writing habit more than I hated getting up so early. If you absolutely CANNOT find a consistent time slot, then hinge it off something else that is consistent: like lunch hour at the day job, or when you get home from work, or right after you put the kids to bed. The most important aspect is that consistency, because that's what builds the habit. 

Do this for 30 days - because that's how long it takes to build a habit - and keep doing it. After that, you can move it around without breaking it. It can adapt and change over the years - and it will take on a life of its own. It will feed you instead of you feeding it. 

Seriously, the best thing for my writing I ever did. 

3 Deadly Deadline Distractions

Wow, Jeffe's Top 7 Distractions is spot-on, especially the NO INTERWEBS. So, what, oh what, could I possibly contribute to such a great list? Three things:

1. Pets Who Want To Play
• Let's face it, it's hard to resist the puppy eyes or the entreating mew. It's damn near impossible to ignore the animal on the keyboard. Be they 5 pounds or 50, if Fluffy wants your attention, Fluffy will find a way to get it. 
2. Toppled Drinks
• That cup of coffee, stein of wine, or balloon of brandy seemed like a great idea until a Random Act of Gracelessness upended all that sweet sticky substance into the keyboard. Why, after all these years, haven't hardware manufacturers developed waterproof keyboards/bottom decks?
3. Spawns
• Dear Reader, I spent the long weekend looking after my three niblings and two fur-babies. I ask you parents, how do you do it? Up at dawn, always on, and holy moly the energy required just to get through breakfast. The wee nieces weren't ill-behaved by any reasonable measure; they were simply being typical school-aged children. But hooboy I barely had time to sit, much less turn on the laptop. Thoughts remotely related to my WiP? Didn't happen. My gray cells overheated from functioning as a surveillance system, always alert and continually revising strategies for copacetic coexistence. Hat-tip all you who do this every day.