Writing routines can really be quite a double-edged sword.
There’s the obvious good side: developing good habits (the *doing* the writing part being, of course, the most important), and using memory cues to help you jump back into your story efficiently.
(On that note, just look at the old psychological studies telling you to always sit at the same spot in a classroom so that, come test day, you’ll have all sorts of reminders around you. More specific to writing, think of all of the people who make playlists based on their book or the type of scene they’re writing to help capture the mood. My favorite memory sense to play with is smell, personally…)
Yeah, the good side is less interesting than the bad—how writing routines can actively *hamper* your writing.
This happens when the writing routine becomes an excuse *not* to write. Let’s look at how this could play out:
“I always have my coffee before writing. I’m out of coffee, so no writing today.”
“I write during my lunch break and had a meeting run long today, so I guess I missed my writing window for the day.”
“Aunt Esther is visiting from out of town so I can’t get to the desk in my guest room, so I’ll have to wait to write until she goes back home.”
Writing routines are, essentially, little rules that you make for yourself. It’s good to give yourself permission to have some rigidity in defending your writing time and space (e.g., being able to tell people “I can’t chat right now, I have an obligation. I’ll text you back in a couple of hours.”)
But they can easily be twisted so that you rules-lawyer your way out of writing. You start following the letter of the rule, instead of the spirit of it. You *want* to write, but writing is hard and is work, and you don’t want the hard stuff. This way, you’re not writing but *it’s not your fault.* (In this example, you essentially don’t want to write, you want to have already written. Sorry, babe, it doesn’t work that way.)
How do you counter this? Firstly, you have to *want* to write. Keep why you care about the story, and the most fun aspects of writing it, in the front of your mind. Secondly, keep in mind that your writing routine is not a fair law concerned with justice. It’s to bind *other people* not yourself! It’s to create time and space for you to write, for you to say no to *other people,* not to yourself.
*You* don’t have to follow your writing routine of always using your special author coffee mug, but *other people* have to honor it by accepting when you tell them to give you space and time.
And yeah, times will happen that something bumps your writing routine out of place. Don’t drop it—if something forces you to reschedule it, then *reschedule* it. You didn’t just miss your writing window for the day so it’s over; make a new window for the day.
No one else is going to make you write. (If it could be all external wishes, the Game of Thrones series would have wrapped up years before the show). It’s all on you. A routine isn’t going to make you write if you aren’t also making the active decision to write, and to prioritize writing.
A successful routine isn’t about finding some magic equation that makes writing easier. It’s always going to take work (hard work, even at the times when it’s so much fun that it doesn’t feel like work). A routine is about agreeing with yourself to set boundaries that enable you to write. That’s all.
And on the magic bullet note, there’s one other way that writing routines fail—using a writing routine from someone else that simply doesn’t work for you.
It’s an easy thing. You read an interview with a favorite prolific author, and she tells about waking up early every morning to get her quiet, solitary alone writing time. She raves about how productive she is in those hours.
But you (and by you, I mean me lol), a hardcore night owl, are never, ever in a thousand years going to wake up early to write before work/school/family obligations/what-have-you. Don’t be the ugly stepsister trying to shove your foot in Cinderella’s shoe. Don’t set yourself up to fail by trying to set a routine that you won’t in a million years *want* to follow.
So, my advice? Fit writing into *your life,* value your writing time, and write.
