The Routine-I-Need-My-Routine Approach
Some writers thrive on writing routines. These folks show up at their desks at the same time every day, channeling Peter de Vries’s statement:
I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.
They run through the same set of warm-up steps, use the same pen and notepad, drink the same brand of coffee, and wear the same pair of lucky socks.
The Pros of Writing Routines
1. Maximized Productivity
The very essence of a daily routine means you’re going to be writing daily. And the fact that you have your routine organized into clearly established steps allows you to dispense with wasting time and instead get right down to business.
2. Enforced Discipline
Writing routines encourage the discipline so crucial to any successful writing career. If we expect to gain the aforementioned productivity, we first have to show up at our desks every day and put words on paper. Establishing a set routine limits your excuses for avoiding that desk and that piece of paper.
3. Sustainable Habits
Writing is hard, no question about it. And the hardest thing about writing is actually sitting down to do it. Getting those first words onto a blank screen can be torture. But the longer we maintain a habit, the easier it becomes to keep maintaining it. Once you’ve shown up at your desk for ninety days straight and written something every single one of those days, the more likely you will be to sit down and write something on the ninety-first day.
The Cons of Writing Routines
1. Lack of flexibility
The fixed nature of writing routines and the habits that result can create an almost superstitious mindset in which we start believing we can’t write anywhere but in our special corner of the coffee shop, with our special purple pen, while listening to a loop of the first five minutes of Beethoven’s 7th. Like Pavlov’s dog, these things condition us to fall into the writing mindset—which is great. But when suddenly the coffee shop closes down, our pen runs out of ink, and our music app malfunctions, we can panic into believing we can’t possibly write without them.
2. Lack of spontaneity
Schedules can sometimes inhibit spontaneity. If writing time is seven in the evening every evening, we can end up ignoring the spontaneous call of inspiration earlier in the day. Maybe we’re struck with a brilliant dialogue exchange in the middle of the afternoon, but if we wait until seven to write it down, we may well lose the freshness of the original idea.
3. Dirty socks
I’m not kidding. Those lucky socks get stinky fast.
The Routine-What-Routine? Approach
Other writers probably wouldn’t recognize a routine if one ran them over in the street. These free spirits prefer writing wherever and whenever inspiration strikes. They don’t need special tools: a napkin or scrap of wrapping paper will do the trick. As for lucky socks—pfft—who needs warm tootsies when the muse starts singing her siren song?
The Pros of No Writing Routines
1. Maximized Productivity
Productivity can strike the non-routined just as often as the schedule-happy among us. But it’s a different kind of productivity. Instead of the enforced, write-every-day kind of productivity, here we get the more uncontrollable but sometimes more powerful bursts of spontaneous write-when-and-wherever-inspiration-strikes productivity. If you’re inspired at three in the afternoon, write now before you lose the inspiration or the oomph to write.
2. Mental elasticity
The less reliant we are on our physical surroundings or stimuli, the less likely we are to talk ourselves out of writing when everything’s not just how we like it. The house is a mess because of a remodeling job? Write in the midst of the sawdust. Sick children interrupt your scheduled writing time? Write while they’re in the tub.
3. Added inspiration
The very fact that we’re not writing in the same place at the same time every day means we’re exposing ourselves to new stimuli. When we look up from the keyboard in need of some inspiration for the next paragraph, we often draw upon whatever we see. If we get to see something different every day, we’re more likely to expand the scope of our possibilities.
The Cons of No Writing Routines
1. Lack of productivity and discipline
Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration (Amazon affiliate link)
Just as the freedom from routine can inspire us to write at any time of the day, it can also mean we end up writing only when we feel like it. As I’ve talked about in my book Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration, we can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to find us. We have to get off our duffs and go after it with industrial-grade butterfly nets.
2. Lack of organization
Another problem with the helter-skelter writing approach is that we aren’t as likely to be organized. When our notes are written on napkins, scraps of wrapping paper, the backs of grocery lists, not to mention half a dozen digital devices (a computer or two, a flash drive or two, our smart phones, our e-readers, and maybe a tablet to boot), we can easily lose whole sections of writing altogether.
3. Cold feet
Lucky socks may get stinky, but at least your feet wouldn’t end up looking like blue raspberry Popsicles.
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There’s much to be said for both of these approaches to writing routines. The only way to avoid either too much routine or not enough is to focus on finding a balance. Search out your strengths and weaknesses and create a routine that is both fixed and flexible enough to grant you the greatest amount of inspiration and productivity every single day.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Are you a routine or a non-routine writer? Tell me in the comments!
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