On Writing Routines
When nothing is working and you have no writing routine
Dear Sonal,
How do I get a writing routine? One that I will actually stick to?
I feel like I’ve tried everything. I’ve asked every writer I know about their writing routine and tried out what they said, and somehow they can do it and I can’t.
I’ve tried apps to form habits and they don’t work for me. I’ve taken classes hoping the deadlines and accountability would help me put together a writing routine, and it works for a while but then it falls apart, usually before the class is even done.
I need a class that will teach me how to have a daily writing routine, but even if this class existed, would I stick to it? I can’t take classes forever. What does it say about me that I am a writer who can’t consistently write?
Sincerely,
Routinely No Routine
Dear Routinely No Routine,
Your question is intensely familiar to me, as it is one I have asked myself many times in the past and then beaten myself up about because I was never able to answer it. This in turn had me in a swirl about my commitment to writing, in that in my head I believed I was fully committed and yet somehow, that did not seem to translate into actual words on a page.
And you know, there were reasons—chaotic business life, babies, home renovation, infertility, marriage, teaching, family illnesses and deaths—but also these weren’t always the reason I wasn’t writing, and deep down, I knew that.
In time, it sank in that I was a writer who had no writing routine, and most importantly, that this was okay.
And at the same time, it also sank in that I was a writer who had an inordinate amount of trouble actually getting my butt in the chair to write, and this was not quite so okay, since it’s apparently very hard to publish a book without actually writing it, and I was getting very tired of being frustrated with myself.
So let’s dig in a little about this whole idea of a writing routine, and see if we can land on the actual issue, and figure it out. Because maybe, everything is fine. But also maybe this is a matter of mindset shift. Or maybe you need some practical strategies to get not only butt in chair, but also pen in hand, paper in front of you, and then one word written and the next and the next…. or computer on and file open and typing them out, or dictating, whatever works for you when it works for you.
First off, do you need a routine at all?
That’s an emphatic no.
Let me say it again with more emphatitude: YOU DO NOT NEED A WRITING ROUTINE.
There’s something almost talisman-like about this idea of having a writing routine, as if the reason you do not write is that you have not figured out the magic series of steps that make the words appear, that without an official routine, you are not truly a writer, you are only playing at this. Like it is on the checklist of things that Real Writers must have, and until you have checked all those things off that list, you are not allowed to call yourself a Real Writer and therefore who are you to take time away from all the adulting that must be done to write? Don’t you have critical illness insurance plans to evaluate?
It’s true that a routine is useful. Showing up at the same time in the same way every day, to make the same cup of tea and read over the same inspirational quote, to use the same pen and same ink to put words on a page can—for many people who are not me—help develop a habit that can carry them when things are creatively more difficult. The ritual of doing it has a way of flicking on the autopilot in your brain to fall into creative flow without having to think too much about it, kind of like when you are driving home from somewhere and find yourself pulling into your garage with very little memory of how you got there.
But some of us are not routine people, and have proven that idiotic “It takes 21 days to form a habit” thing wrong multiple times. Don’t force it if it’s not you. It’s more important to write in whatever way works for you than to try and force some entirely arbitrary routine on yourself that looks really pretty on paper, and justifies buying a special writing mug, but has no hope of working because it’s just not you. There is no checklist of Real Writer things that you must do before you can justify taking time away from adulting—taking time for your creative self is its own justification. But feel free to buy the mug anyway.
If you can find ways to sit and write, you do not need a writing routine. If you are reasonably satisfied by the amount of writing time in your life, then you really do not need a routine. The idea of trying to have a writing routine is nothing but a bullshit fantasy about what you think a writer ought to do. You’re fine. I envy you. You can stop reading here because this post is way too long.
Still here? Okay, some more questions.
Do you legitimately have time to write?
Yes, yes, in theory, we always have time to write, we can always squeeze in that extra ten minutes somewhere, but in practice, life can be overwhelming. There are only so many hours in the day, and to say YES to writing means saying NO to something else. There’s a limit to the amount of “I’ll just get up earlier” that is practical, especially if you are already getting up early to attend to the seventy million things that are somehow on your plate, or if you hate mornings. There’s a limit to our physical energy, our emotional resources, and our time, and because we live under capitalism, some of those resources get used up on making money so that we can further expend those resources on feeding and sheltering ourselves. And that’s before anything else lands on our plate.
Don’t go comparing yourself to that other writer in your social media feed who seems to write a new book every year, works full-time, has a clean house, a full social life, exercises regularly and still has time to make personalized cupcakes for their kid’s kindergarten class. I don’t get how they do it either, and can only assume they are actually a bot.
The sub-question to this is, are there too many things on your plate that don’t need to be there?
If, for example, you’re barely scraping together rent money cleaning houses while caring for an infant and a dying parent and dealing with your own chronic illness, why are you worrying about writing routines? Writing will wait, your landlord will not, your clients will not, your infant will not, death will not, your health will not. Yes, writing might provide you with some much needed respite, and it’s wonderful if you can make that happen, but it’s also okay to eat chips and watch TV instead of writing if that’s all you have energy for. Dump the guilt. Having a minute to yourself is the same as having time to write. Rest.
But what if the things on your plate are more along the lines of, saying yes to every classroom volunteer opportunity, saying yes to helping every friend who needs a favour, saying yes to every unpaid extra work ‘opportunity’ at your job? What if it’s your own internal desire to make every meal entirely from scratch, to grow all the food you consume from seeds you started yourself, to go to every protest and rally for various causes?
These are things that you have committed to, true, and may also be things that are deeply important to you, but they are also things you don’t have to do.
Keep in mind that some of this pressure to say yes to everything (and therefore no to writing) comes from structural and socialized pressures. The world will never make it easy for you to write, but that’s because the world is dumb.
You have some choices to make. These things have value, yes, but they take up time and energy. It’s okay to say no to some of those things. No, your book—while personally fulfilling—will never be more important than stopping the death of children in Gaza, nor will it alleviate your parenting guilt, but it’s not as if not writing will end war and dismantle structural sources of guilt. Everyone deserves time for their own things too.
You might be surprised how many things you are allowed to say no to. I remember a student from a few years ago who also struggled to find time to write, and one of the reasons she identified was the need to put together complete dinners for her teenagers. I suggested she could perhaps stock the freezer with frozen ready-made meals from the grocery store and let her teens fend for themselves for a week or so…. she hesitated and stammered, but it was clear that this was not something that had occurred to her, that she could do less, even for a week.
And yes, I think she likely had some value and personal pride tied up in using her time and labour to feed her family, and that is a wonderful thing too—but a week of not doing it so she could put energy into writing, something else she put a lot of personal value in, doesn’t take anything away from her.
Saying no to something doesn’t have to be forever, but who knows, maybe you’ll find it addictive, and say no to more things. Maybe you’ll start realizing that there’s a split between the values you actually have versus the values you’ve been told you have. I, for one, was raised with the value of listening to my elders without question, but feel free to ask my mother how often I say no to her, and I’m sure you’ll hear all about what a terrible person I am. (Heh. If only I was actually a terrible person, the ways I could mess with her…)
Okay, but let’s say you have time and you say no to stuff like you’re genetically programmed to refuse everything, but you still find yourself avoiding writing like you’re genetically programmed to avoid it. Next question:
Can you openly admit that writing comes first for you?
This is kind of tied to the last one—where is writing on the priority list for you?
The tricky thing for me was that no matter how many times I told myself writing was first on my personal priority list, it was always hard to balance that against what the kids need, what the household needs, what my friends and family need, what work needs. For years, I told myself I didn’t have time to write, but the truth was, I had time, I just wasn’t using it, and no amount of ‘writing routine’ was going to save me from the fact that the moment I sat down to write would invariably be the moment when I realized that I really, really need to declutter my coat closet. Or answer that one email. Or text back a friend.
Years ago, a friend mentioned that it’s always hard to write because there are so many legitimate distractions, and at the time, that felt very true. Laundry is legitimate. Grocery shopping is legitimate. Art may feed our soul, but it’s hard to describe it as being as legitimate as feeding the family.
But at the same time, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You do not have to do all the responsible things before you are permitted to write, especially since there is no end to the long list of responsible things to be done. Can the laundry wait a day? Can dinner be pizza? Can that email wait another thirty minutes while you write? You can make your own choices on this, but don’t put writing last, because writing never has to be done, and therefore will never happen if you do all the ‘has to’ things first. Yet if you write first, if you take the time to do the thing for you first, then somehow all the responsible things will still get done, because they have to. And hey, at least you can do it with all the self-satisfied gusto of “I wrote today.”
It sounds very easy, but actually putting this into practice can be hard. It’s easier to throw a load of clothes in the washing machine than it is to face the blank page, and all our fears and perfectionism, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable by creating words.
Plus, for a lot of us, writing time also requires asking something from the people around us—friends, family, kids—which means not only does writing have to be important to us, we also have to convince other people of this.
If you’re a parent, the guilt in doing this looms large. My kids will ask why I can’t volunteer to hand out pizza lunch like other parents do, and but doing so takes time away from writing—even though often I don’t actually write, which increases the guilt of not volunteering more at school (I am, technically, unemployed) and also the pressure on making the most of my writing time increases which makes the resistance to actually writing even stronger.
There’s no easy solution to wrestling with conflicting expectations, except to remember that you do not have to come last. It’s not selfish to take up time and space for your own need to create.
But let’s say you’ve done all that, and still, you do not have a writing routine. What then?
Are you a person who typically does well with routines and schedules and structures?
If you are, good news. Put this in your calendar, on your planner, and show up and do it.
Commit to using this time for writing, and not spare time to do other errands or catch up on stuff, I don’t care if replying to that one email will only take a minute, you and I both know it’s never actually a minute. It doesn’t have to be every day, although it’s great if you can swing that. It doesn’t have to be big chunks of time, although there may be points in a larger project when you need that time—Cheryl Strayed used to schedule weekends for herself to check into a cheap motel and binge-write. But make it something workable to for your life.
If Life happens, you can always review your schedule and adjust accordingly. If you’re running low on energy one day, it doesn’t have to be working on a specific project—you can use the time to read, to do prompts for fun, to fiddle with some poetry that will never see the light of day, to doodle, to stare into space… whatever either feeds your creative soul, or allows you a moment to engage creatively. All of it counts.
However… if you are not a routine person. Welcome to my world. Now you have to get creative, and maybe get some help.
Do you possibly have ADHD?
If you already know you have ADHD, then stop trying to figure out the magical writing routine—it’s not going to happen. Or maybe it will happen, but it’s going to be harder to make work than simply saying “Okay, this is my writing time.”
If you’ve been wondering if you have ADHD… Take a look at Rebecca Makkai’s newsletter about writing with ADHD, and see how much of it seems familiar. It won’t be everything, but if your reaction is more “sounds like me” than “OMG how do people live like this?” then you may want to look into getting diagnosed.
For about 25 years or so, I also wondered, but never quite got around to getting a diagnosis—partly because most of the services out there to get diagnosed as an adult are expensive and/or a pain in the ass to access*, partly because I was worried about getting dismissed by medical people, and also partly because not getting around to making an appointment to see if you have ADHD is a very ADHD thing to do.
(*If you are in Canada, take a look at Talk With Frida, currently available in six provinces and expanding—this is the route I took.)
I currently take Adderall, which is helpful, but medication doesn’t fix everything, and has it’s own drawbacks—mine is mostly that when the Adderall wears off at night, I get a rebound of increased ADHD symptoms which then make it hard to actually go to bed, and the next thing you know, it’s 4AM and I still haven’t completed every New York Times Crossword from March 2021 and somehow this was worth sacrificing sleep for. But the nice thing about this kind of ADHD medication is that I can decide not to take it any time, so if it’s been too many nights of being up late, I skip it so I can be tired all day and this is more motivating to turning in early.
If this is you, or even if you don’t have ADHD but are struggling, you’re going to need some help sitting down to write regularly, even over and above any mental block about perfectionism or whether or not you deserve to do this at all. In part 2 of her newsletter, Rebecca Makkai writes about some of her strategies, but here are some things that have worked for me.
Setting a timer. Whether it’s using the Pomodoro technique or something else, the timer keeps me relatively focused.
Accountability. This works well when I have a deadline (assignment due, writing group deadline, contest deadline, this newsletter since I've managed to stick to the schedule and the moment I break my streak all is lost.) Unfortunately, most of the writing I do these days doesn’t require accountability, but I have writing and creative partners with whom I check in to say what I’ve been working on, or what I’ve gotten done, and it gets really awkward to keep saying “uh, still nothing.”
Really, really tiny goals. Checking things off a list gives me dopamine, and dopamine creates motivation. The trouble is, I tend to make goals like “Write an entire short story” and then get demotivated when I can’t get this done in half an hour or so. It’s much, much easier to set the goal as “start a short story” or “work on the story for 20 minutes” or “write 100 words in the story.” I will almost always do more than this, but it’s got to feel like something I can whip off quickly and easily.
Body doubling. Working with someone, even if we are working on different things, is immensely helpful. It’s like having a gym buddy. This works for me in person, over Zoom, or even over text message.
Music. For me, it has to be either some random concentration music from YouTube, or the same half-dozen albums that I used to work to when I was in university—enjoyable but so familiar I don’t actually need to listen. Occasionally, television serves the same purpose for me, as long as it’s both boring and familiar enough for me not to really watch, but also not so uninteresting that I get irritated with its existence.
Understanding my own ADHD. The more I come to learn about and accept how ADHD manifests for me, the less time I waste on getting frustrated with myself. My particular issue is task paralysis—I tend to have a hard time getting started, but once I get going, I’m usually okay. This lets me narrow the problem: it’s not writing, it’s starting.
But more importantly, for me this means accepting that whatever method I come up with, it will not work for me all the time. My ADHD craves novelty, so rather than coming up with a singular method, I shift between several. I track things on different apps at different times, on a paper planner, on my whiteboards, on social media, on small charts that I make myself—just the fact that it’s new will help me start.
This has gone long, but that’s simply because there’s a lot to this idea of a writing routine, in terms of our ideas about writing, the place writing holds relative to everything else going on in our life, and then also our own personal set of abilities and neurodiversities.
But ultimately, it comes down to discarding everyone else’s ideas about what an ideal way to sit down and write is, and to consider your own personality and circumstances.
Do you have a writing routine? Have you tried and failed to have a writing routine? Do you have your own tricks to get yourself writing in the absence of a specific routine? Leave a comment and tell me about it—your experiences might just be the solution for someone else.
My process is very disciplined, which is good for ticking the boxes and getting my hours in…but I’m still amazed at how my days evaporate with all the other stuff that needs to get done. I keep my daily writing very short and manageable: 5 minutes (timed) of day-dreaming/staring out the window and then 20 minutes of free-writing. And oftentimes, that’s ALL I get done. It’s helpful to understand that this is still a great effort…and that magic can still happen in 20 minutes. And it still leaves me time to eat chips and watch TV. 🤓
I keep a writing process journal that I start with every morning. I write down: 1. what I wrote the day before, 2. why I wrote it, and 3. how I feel about it. That tends to put me in writing mode and remind me where I left off the day before. That being said, I was so glad to read your post as I'm in the middle of a family medical "crisis" that requires me to do some caretaking for several weeks and my routine has disappeared. After reading your post, I see that everything that is not writing, even "crisis" are just "life," and writing still has importance in these moments.... we have importance in our own life... if I may be so bold, we are our first priority.