Routing Your Routine
Creating a Manageable Writing Routine
In my last post, I alluded to my writing routine recently going through some changes, and, at the end of last year, I wrote a whole post about why I find routines important, in general. Well, you might be staring down all the time ahead of us in 2026 and thinking you, too, would like to set up structure for your creative projects. Let me give you a few tips on how to do just that!
I feel it’s necessary to preface with a reminder: there is no one-size-fits-all magical equation that’s going to help you achieve all your creative goals or get your story written. Our lives, time, and resources look different from someone else’s, and that’s okay. Use these tips how you can and no sweat if some of them don’t work for you.
Don’t go crazy
When starting something new or taking the first step toward achieving a goal, we can often experience a surge of motivation. We can’t wait to get started, we can’t wait to see progress, and we’re ready to get goin’. That motivation and momentum can be difficult to maintain, once we get into the thick of things. Before we get to that point where the process feels more challenging than exciting, we’ve committed to too much or heaped too many expectations upon ourselves, which is why my first tip is don’t go crazy.
You are only a finite human being with twenty-four hours in a day. There’s only so much you can do, and, when things get challenging, there’s only going to be so much you’ll want to do. So, start forming your routine/habit in a small, feasible way.
A lot of people recommend picking a dedicated time of day to write and sticking with it. Let’s say you pick 7p.m. After a while, when it gets to be 7p.m., your body will subconsciously begin to recognize that as your allotted time for writing. You’ll feel more ready to be productive and have an easier time gaining traction, as opposed to randomly squeezing writing into your day.
Now, what’s important about this allotted writing time, in the beginning, is that you don’t sit yourself down and make wild demands upon yourself, like cranking out 2,000 words or writing non-stop for an hour or finishing only once you’ve completed a new chapter. Start with a more manageable bite, say, setting a timer for twenty-five minutes and working until it runs out. That way, you give yourself the structure of a concrete start and end. A writing session can feel less overwhelming when you can see that it’s not going to stretch on indefinitely. Then, if you reach the end of your twenty-five minutes, you can pause, assess what you were able to accomplish, and, if you so choose, reset the timer for another little session. Eventually, you begin to build that writing muscle to the point where you can set your timer for longer amounts of time and it feels like a natural part of the rhythm of your day.
When you reach the end of a writing session and are assessing what it is you’ve accomplished, don’t forget about my warning that we tend to set out on endeavors with too many or very high expectations. Be kind to yourself. Be grateful for a newly written page, paragraph, sentence that doesn’t sound half bad.
What I’m constantly reminding myself is this, and I think you should take this to heart, too: my only expectation should be that I’ve put words onto the page. Whether it’s “good” or otherwise is beside the point. Editing, revising, polishing are all for different days. You just need to do what you can to make the writing happen, in the first place.
2. Incentivize
Perhaps it sounds childish or immature to talk about “gamifying” your life, but l don’t find anything wrong with setting up a reward system to incentivize behavior changes or goal achievement. I’ve found it can really make a difference on progress and outcomes.
When it comes to forming your writing routine, this could look like reserving a special beverage so you’re only allowed to consume it while you write. Do you have a nice tea? Beer from a local brewery? Rich hot cocoa filled to the brim with mini marshmallows? Save it for your writing time, and it will make your session all the more intentional while also acting as a reward for following-through.
Rewarding yourself once you’ve reached certain checkpoints or milestones is also a good idea. Let’s say you’ve mapped out your story and know that you’re going to have a total of fifty chapters in the first draft. Celebrate once you’ve hit ten completed chapters. Maybe you’ve been writing consistently for two weeks. Celebrate that. You hit 20,000 words? Celebrate! Whatever the milestone is that hits you as significant—don’t celebrate every, little thing or else you’ll take the meaning out of it—treat yourself (or yo’self, as they used to say). In addition to the milestone being significant, pick a reward that means something to you. And then work, write, for it.
A little bonus piece to this is creating a physical progress tracker so you can watch as you’re getting closer and closer to your milestone. I did this over the summer when I was really working on being on my phone less. I had two, small receptacles I kept on my desk, and one had fifty, wooden beads in it. I also had a hand-drawn poster on my corkboard outlining twenty different activities I could do, instead of being on my phone. For every activity I did (things like writing someone a letter, learning a new recipe, doing yardwork, embroidering, etc.), I moved a wooden bead from its container into the empty one. There were fifty beads, and I couldn’t reward myself (and you better believe I’d made a small list of what constituted as suitable prizes) until I got through all of them. It took me all summer to do that, though the timing doesn’t really matter. Just seeing that physical tracker and my list of activities was a reminder of what I was working toward. Think about what you might be able to do in your own space to put up a reminder of what you’re trying to achieve.
3. Organize & prepare
I understand that not everyone has a full outline of their story when they sit down to begin writing. I understand that there are writers who fly by the seat of their pants and make it work. I’m a little of both, depending on the project and the day. You do what works for you.
What I’m suggesting that might be helpful in establishing your writing routine is making notes for yourself or to-do lists of what your priorities are so that, at the start of a writing session, you don’t have to wonder what to get started with. I recommend doing this the day before you’re actually going to be sitting down to write, and it can take all of five minutes. Then, once you get going on your regular writing time, it can become the ending step of your writing process, taking a minute to review what you’ve written and jotting down what that means for tomorrow’s session.
Your notes could look like this:
pick up where I left off tonight & try to finish the current chapter
research train robberies in historic America
sketch out a concept of what my MC’s home city is like culturally, financially, demographically, etc.
write a diary entry in the voice of my MC to better get a feel for who they are
rewrite the scene I was just working on from a different POV to see if that works better
Not only is this helpful in clearly pointing out what it is you want to be working on, it can also help declutter your mental space. Sometimes, when I’m writing and really in the thick of a draft, plot points or character arcs can get muddled. I’m thinking about too many story elements and need to pull back, get another look at what it is I’m working on from a higher, broader perspective. You can get too in-the-weeds and lose sight of how a specific scene is (or is not) contributing to the overall plot. You can hit a wall with a character and not know where to take them next. Engage with organization that helps you manage the various tasks it takes to write a book and set yourself up to maximize each writing session. Your time is too valuable to spend too much of it not sure what it is you need to be prioritizing, and you’ll be more energized for sessions, if you feel like you’re going into them knowing what you’re setting out to do.
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There are more tips, of course, I could pass along and that you could keep in mind when forming a routine, but I’m taking my own first piece of advice and not going crazy with too much. At the end of the day, you gotta keep it simple because, when you start implementing too many steps or taking on too much, it’s difficult to maintain. Give yourself a solid foundation, a steady confidence even on lackluster days, and build from there.
If you’d like another post with more advice on this, let me know and feel free to share your own tips with me. I’ll catch ya back here next week, and, until then, happy writing, friends!