I’ve spent the last three weeks off my routine and it’s been driving me crazy.
I’ve always been a morning person, preferring to go to bed early and wake up early. Even in high school and college, assignments were completed in the pre-dawn hours, and this was before I liked coffee.
The ever-shifting hours of news work further solidified my productivity preferences. I worked all hours, but the early mornings were my favorite, hands down.
I spent most of 2017 and a few months of 2018 training for a marathon, hitting the gym at 5am for treadmill time or spin class before work, and after I crossed the finish line I took that time to work on my writing goals.
Most mornings are pretty productive and I get in a thousand words. When I’m in a writing workshop, my time is often spent reading and making notes on other people’s work, which pays off in spades when I go to review my stuff and have their insightful comments handy. I’ve recently dedicated Mondays to writing this blog and sending out two query letters a week, the latter of which kickstarts my week with anxiety, but brings me steps closer to the goal of publication one day, I hope.
No matter what I’m doing to further my craft, I log on to Twitter’s very kind and supportive #5amWritersClub. I know for many the jury’s still out on Twitter, and if you turn on the news for five minutes, who could blame you? It took me about a year to curate my Twitter feed to be full of uplifting, helpful, and supportive writers. I can get into writers twitter more at a later date, if you’d like! In fact, I probably will.
So after
- Week one: vacation including the Writer’s Digest Conferences
- Week two: a week in central Pennsylvania doing family stuff
- Week three: a hurricane
I am back to normal and I’m feeling pretty great about it.
What’s your artistic routine? Do you have one? How do you make words happen in between family, social commitments, and work?
P.S. If you want to laugh, check out this MentalFloss article about Hunter S. Thompson’s writing routine. Not to tip my hand too much, but I can assure you that my cocaine budget probably isn’t anywhere near his. Although I do appreciate the 6 a.m. hot tub routine with champagne, Dove bars, and fettuccine.
The Merry Manuscript 