[This week author Chad Grayson shares wisdom of the importance of establishing a writing routine]
Everybody has the same advice if you want to accomplish any sort of major creative endeavor–whether it’s becoming a published author or creating award-winning macrame projects. The advice is “make it a part of your writing routine.” I’m going to focus on establishing a writing routine here, but some of this advice is good for any kind of creative project.
Find Time That Actually Works for You
The first thing you need to do is take a realistic look at your schedule and figure out when you have the time to devote yourself to a creative project.
It would be great to take a week at a time and plot it out at once. But here’s the thing. You also need to consider when your brain is most capable of doing the creative work.
If you decide to work from 10 am to 12 pm every day but your brain really wants to shut down at that time, then it’s not a good choice of time. You can’t brute force this. There are things you can do to get your brain in shape for work, but DON’T FORCE YOURSELF TO WORK at a time that isn’t good for you. Something will break. That something might be you.
For me, I found I do my best creative work between 11am and 5pm.
Small Chunks > Big Struggles
Finding 20 minutes to do really good work, is preferable to finding two hours when you’re going to struggle. And you don’t need to find large blocks of time together, necessarily. A lot of people write books in 30 minutes a day. Volume is secondary to consistency.
So, find times that work for you–both with your schedule, and your energy/brain. And know…this does not have to be the same time every day. It also does not have to be EVERY day. The key here is to find places you can work without having to reconfigure your entire life. Maybe this means giving up an hour of television every day. Maybe it means doing it doing your lunch hour. But find some space for yourself here.
And especially when you first start out, set easily reachable goals. Add to them from there. Your brain will be motivated by incidents of success.
It probably does need to be about the same amount of overall time, week to week, whether that’s a cumulative hour, or even six hours. But quantity of time is more important than it being the same time every day.
If your brain is in the habit of being creative for the same amount of time every week, then the skill will develop and it will no longer be a struggle.
Focus on Habit, Not Output
When you first start out, schedule the time, and show up for it–and without putting a lot of productivity targets up for yourself.
Show up, with the intent to work.
If nothing comes out, sit there for a while. Don’t scroll on your phone. Yes, I’m talking to myself here–before giving yourself permission to do something else. The muse sometimes needs to know where to meet you.
If you show up and expect this from yourself, your brain will eventually learn to cooperate to avoid being bored.
Communicate Your Writing Time
So, schedule the time that works for you. Then … and this is important… share this information with the people in your life. Tell them ‘This is my writing time, please don’t interrupt me unless someone important is on fire.’
When I rededicated myself to writing back in 2019, I realized I needed to do this. And it took the people in my life a little while to get used to it. Now I share my schedule with them with my writing time clearly demarcated, and it’s just known that this is what I’m doing. And yes, of course, if there is some sort of genuine emergency, you should be interruptible. But there are very few genuine emergencies that crop up.
So, schedule the time, show up for the time and COMMUNICATE the time. Those are some of the biggest roadblocks to establishing a creative habit.
Train Your Brain with Rituals
Once you have the time, develop little rituals for yourself that tell your brain it is time to work. For myself, I do a ten-minute meditation on creativity to get me going. I also start off every writing session by giving a light edit to what I wrote last session.
But it’s important when you’re starting out, that you’re making sure you’re establishing the habit, not necessarily concentrating on being super productive right away. Though…you might be!
Or you might be at first and then a couple of weeks in you find it’s more of a struggle.
Building the habit is the important thing. You will build up to truly impressive amounts of productivity eventually.
Just like when you start running, you can’t run a marathon or maybe even a mile, but you start building the habit, get your body to know what you’re expecting of it, and then it gets stronger over time.
Think Like a Writer—Because You Are One
And it’s important that you start to think of yourself as a writer. A writer is someone who writes. Not necessarily someone who publishes, but they write regularly.
Also, not someone who thinks about writing and has a trilogy planned but they haven’t written one word yet. By scheduling your work time, showing up for it, and then actually doing it, you prove to yourself and the world that you’re actually a writer.
Make it an important part of your identity and don’t let anyone take it away from you.
Even if you just have ten minutes a day to devote to your writing. Or maybe just a couple of hours on a Saturday every week, consistency can propel you a very long way.
Wrapping up
I wish I could give you an ideal schedule to follow, but no one else can figure that out for you. Everyone’s life is different, and it will be harder for some people than others, depending on their outside responsibilities. If you have to work two jobs and raise toddlers by yourself, this will be a bigger challenge than it would be for, say, me. But it can happen no matter what else you have going on, even if it’s just a couple of sentences a day.
So, yeah, if you want to do this for real, you will need to make it a regular part of your life. That will look different for you than it will for other people. Whatever way works is valid. You don’t have to mimic anyone else’s schedule or level of productivity. Whatever gets you writing is a major victory.
This and other topics are discussed regularly on David Farland’s Apex-Writers via presentations, discussions sessions, its dedicated Discord channel and Facebook group. To learn how to join, visit apex-writers.com
Chad Grayson has worn many hats: tech support flunky, gas station philosopher, reluctant middle school wrangler, and, for one unforgettable night, cheese-mold removal specialist. These days he lives in far Northern California, where he writes hopeful, character-focused sci-fi and fantasy that will break your heart and duct tape it back together. He can usually be found painting tiny fantasy heroes and monsters, wandering the woods in deep narrative contemplation, or yelling at his plot outlines like they’ve personally betrayed him (they know what they did).
His superpowers include procrastination, dyscalculia, and making emotionally devastating story beats sound like a perfectly reasonable life choice.
Find him at chadgrayson.com (where you can sign up for his bimonthly newsletter full of exclusive posts, previews, book reviews, and updates), on Threads as @c.e.grayson, on BlueSky at @chadgrayson.com, and on Facebook at facebook.com/c.e.grayson.
