My Morning Writing Routine
I’m a person who thrives off routine. If I don’t have a to-do list or a loose agenda in front of me, you’ll probably just find me 20 pages deep into a clothing website or lost in the endless scroll of Instagram.
The whole day gone.
So when I decided I was serious about writing a book and (hopefully, eventually) also getting it published, I knew I needed a plan. I needed to find a way to get words on the page while also balancing my full-time job and allowing myself to have non-writing time on the weekends. Here’s what helped me establish my personal writing routine:
SCHEDULING A DATE WITH MYSELF
At the start of my writing journey, I had a mentor call with Elisabeth Huijskens, the founder of Trades of Hope. She’s someone I’ve always admired from afar, and though our day-to-day work doesn’t quite overlap, I appreciated how much effort she put into her business and her personal brand… and I wanted to know how in the world she managed it all.
She suggested scheduling “dates” with myself. Time blocked out in my calendar when I could just focus on my writing and worry about everything else going on in my life after said date. So that’s when I started my morning writing routine. I told myself I would try to dedicate at least an hour to my book before I had to log on for work – a morning coffee date, if you will – and have been consistently showing up for myself ever since.
COMMITTING TO 1,000 WORDS A DAY (SORT OF)
From there, I decided how much I wanted to write each day. I’m not a fast drafter, but I knew that I wanted to shoot for 1,000 words each day in hopes that I wouldn’t spend an eternity on my first book. I did this for a few months until I hit a certain word count (around ~60k) and then continued at 500 words or more per day until I finally finished my first draft.
USING A FOCUS APP
When writing feels like a slog and you’re constantly asking yourself “Is this story even going anywhere?” or “When will it end?!” getting 1,000 words out is a challenge. Sure, I love to write, but it isn’t always easy – and when things start to get tough I LOVE to procrastinate. Will watching this video of a dog trying different human foods make feel better and help distract me from how terrible I think my book is? Obviously.
Unfortunately, hours of watching cute animal videos does not result in a completed novel. Unless you’re doing research for a book where the meet cute happens at a scenic farm or you’re writing a romance about a vet who falls for the owner of that three-legged cat and then… maybe it does?
After falling into a bad habit of writing only to be interrupted by multiple rounds of social media breaks and checking text messages, I knew something had to change. I had heard about the Forest app from one of my favorite writing podcasts, Write or Die, and so I decided to incorporate it into my writing routine to see if that would help. Welp, it was a game changer.
With this app, I was able to grow trees in a virtual forest during my “focused time” each day. During this time, I couldn’t use any other apps on my phone, and if I did (it only happened one time ok), my tree would die. Traumatic? Yes? Motivating? Also yes. Surprisingly, this was enough of an incentive for me to put my phone down and not pick it up until I finished my writing sprint every morning. That, plus the satisfaction of seeing my little forest slowly come to life. (Hey, we all loved FarmVille once upon a time.)
