Writing Routine

As promised, my writing routine is below. Since I schedule my writing, I’ll be just including what I do in the hour I’ve set aside most weekdays. My longer five hour weekend writing schedule’s rather similar, so just lengthen were noted if you’d like. Enjoy!

1. Close all windows save the document for the manuscript (MS) and Youtube.
2. Turn Youtube to my playlist for the MS. (Either #Gatekeeper or #Mahwaerm right now)
   1. Gatekeeper is mainly rock with some metal and a few Sia songs that border the rock / power ballad sort of line for me.
   2. Mahwaerm is orchestral and electronic production pieces like Audiomachine and soundtracks without lyrics.
3. Put the playlist on repeat and minimize.
4. Set timer to 30 minutes (half the playlist) and work on the MS writing until the timer goes off.
5. Once the timer has gone off, pace / do some calisthenics to get my muscles going for 5-10 minutes. This keeps me from fidgeting too much and helps keep me from going into a state of hyperfocus or too deep into hyperfocus if I have the time to do the more intense version of this on weekends.
6. Set timer to 30 minutes and continue working on the MS until the timer goes off.
7. Save and close the document. Switch off the list.
8. 5-10 minutes of a break then continuing onto another task.

With the break, it’s technically an hour and some, but I’m only writing for an hour of that. On weekends, I change the 30 minutes to 2.5 hours. While going hyperfocused might work well for some, I’ve found it’s like naps for me. Certain lengths of time are fine, and I can break myself out with a timer to move onto other tasks, but I’ve found hyperfocusing for an hour without a forced midpoint break leaves me a bit scattered, and anything longer than 3 hours leaves me disgruntled unless that one task is the only thing I have to do the whole day.

Pick and choose what you’d like if you want.

Good Luck!