What is Your Writing Routine?

Today’s Insider Higher Ed is running a great essay by Peg Boyle Single on how to finish writing a doctoral dissertation. Her advice, however, could apply to all kinds of writing. Single suggests:

1). Schedule writing times
2). Decide on a “task based” or “time based” approach to writing
3). Backup your writing with a separate file for every day
4). Write your chapters from beginning to end and then go back and revise.
5). “Turn off your internal critic.”
6). End your writing session by preparing for the next one.
7). Track your progress.

I have found that scheduling a regular time to write is the most important of these suggestions. I try to write five days a week, usually from about 6:00 to 9:00 or 9:30 in the morning. (I am thankful that my wife gets the kids off to school). I am not always writing sentences and paragraphs during this period, but I do devote these hours to doing writing project-related tasks such as reading or taking notes or outlining. I thus tend to take a “time-based” approach to writing unless I am on a tight deadline and must go to a “task based” approach. By 10:00 I am preparing to head to the college for the day and do not worry about writing again until the following morning.

I agree with Single that preparing the first draft is the hardest part of writing. This is also the part of the writing process in which I suffer the most from a lack of motivation. I actually love revising and refining my prose. This is the fun part of writing. So I will usually just plow through the first drafts with little attention to style and then go back and craft sentences, turns of phrases, etc…

I could not agree more with Single’s suggestion to end each writing session by preparing for the next one. When I roll out of bed and head to my home office, I want to be ready to dive into the project. Alll the books I will need must be nearby and my notes must be in front of me so I can peruse them while waiting for my computer to warm up.

What is your writing routine?