My Writing Routine: Not Advice, but Confession

Here it goes, the first editorial type of post I’m making on this blog. To be honest, it took me a lot of time and willpower to sit down and write this. Initially, I was thinking about making vlog-type YouTube videos where I sit in front of a camera and just babble whatever I can think of. I tried this approach at home, recording myself and what not, but still, I feel uneasy talking from the top of my head and showing my ugly face. Writing, especially writing in English, is the only way that allows me to coherently organise my thoughts.

As you can infer from the title, this post is not about giving advice. You can find plenty of clickbaity advice on reddit, medium, and other platforms. This post, in truth, is sort of a confession. What works for me whenever I sit down and want to write fiction. What I am going to describe may become useful to you, but also maybe not. Here’s how my writing routine developed:

When I was writing my first novel last year, I clearly remember that I sat down in the evening–after a whole day of work–and just started writing. I had an idea I wanted to turn into a story. After churning out about 500 words my brain was fried and I turned off the computer.

In fact, writing my first novel was a mess, but the routine was there. I used to write either in the evenings or during the weekends. I didn’t measure my progress in words per day, but in words per week, totaling to about 2,000 or 2,500 words. After a month, if I had 10,000 words, I would be satisfied.

Back then, I either sat in front of a computer in a dark bedroom–and in a fairly hunched and slouching position–which wasn’t comfortable or I would be in my work room, sitting down on a normal chair, yawning a lot from tiredness. Since we’re talking about computers, I would get distracted easily, opening up email, social media, YouTube, etc. But, after a few hours of fighting myself, I would get at least the lousy 500 words.

With regard to the second novel, however, I am trying a different approach. I have a long period of free time off work now, so I wake up, eat breakfast, and sit down to write for an hour or two. I am again either in my bedroom or workroom, but I try not to slouch that much. And I avoid distractions as well. I just tell myself: “It’s writing time. Distractions can come later.”It works so far.

Of course, whenever something crops up in the story that needs fact-checking and clarification then I immediately open a search engine, but I don’t go down the rabbit hole of, for example, “Oh, that’s interesting, let’s watch a three hour video about it.” I just check what needs to be checked and get back to writing.

Now I measure my progress in daily words per day, which range from 800 to 1,500, but this is mostly due to temporary removal of the toll my work had on me.

So that’s my writing routine for now. Sitting down and getting it done within the period of at least two hours per day. And what are the specifics you may ask?

Well, I don’t use any advanced software. Actually, I write on Google Drive of all places–but make sure to download and back up my work–because I can use a dark mode add-on in a browser and save my eyes from the blinding light. I know that newer versions of Microsoft Office have dark mode, but I have an old version, and I use it mainly for work purposes.

In addition, what do I do to avoid slouching? I definitely avoid writing on my bed. I have a small table beside me, so I place a laptop over there, sit, and write. And as for my work room, just as the picture above shows, I place a laptop on a shoebox, connect the external keyboard, and that’s it.

There’s always a solution and there’s always a writing routine that works for you. But what if routine becomes tiring for you? I will try to discuss this in my next post.