Well breaking your routine might be an overplay in words, but breaks are essential as a way to boost your creative energy.
Having a routine makes it easier to maintain your writing as a way of working. Many infopreneurs and freelance writers earn enough to give up their day job, but then find it difficult to maintain that rate of paying writing work or income from their sites.
By getting into a good routine, it becomes easier to write for enough time each day to keep paying the bills. Just having a routine for your writing will ensure your time spent writing is productive and you do not waste as much time in daydreaming as a way to avoid having to write.
A good writing routine is when you are feeling freshest, usually in the morning, and makes use of the times when you feel most creative. Ideally you should have a routine that fits in with your lifestyle, and allows some flexibility for the times when writing is not a priority.
Working from home means that you have to be self-motivating and disciplined. This is where having a regular routine for writing will really help. Otherwise, it’s simply too easy to waste a big chunk of the day, before you sit down at the computer to write.
Remember that you are likely to be at your most creative in the mornings, when your mind and body are refreshed from sleep. Getting into a routine that entails some writing in the morning is often the best option to be productive.
The best routine will also allow for exercise and reasonable breaks, in order to keep your mind working clearly throughout the day. Exercise is terrific for getting blood flow to the brain and giving you a clear head. Some writers like to start the day with a walk or a jog, to get in some exercise in what can be quite a sedentary career, and to ‘blow away the cobwebs’.
Reasonable breaks throughout the day include a regular time for lunch and at least one break mid-morning and mid-afternoon, depending on your writing schedule and the rest of your lifestyle. Allow some flexibility in when and how you take your breaks, to make the most of when you are writing creatively and when you are suffering from mental blanks.
The routine is important to encourage you to start your writing. Starting at the same time each day will encourage productivity. As your body gets used to the routine, it is much easier to start writing each day.
A good routine is to do some exercise early in the morning, shower and then sit down ready to write. Many writers will spend half an hour or so in preparatory work such as increasing vocabulary, reading other’s people’s writing or catching up on where they left off the day before. Then the common practice is to write for an hour or so, have a brief break and then do some research for an hour or so. Write for another hour before you break for lunch. Breaking up the chunks of time spent in actually writing will enable you to keep your focus while you are writing.
It is a great idea for writers to spend some time increasing their vocabulary and to complete some mental exercises to encourage better writing and the use of creativity in their writing. The following sites have some excellent mental exercises for writers:
www.wordsplosion.com – this is a site dedicated to all those weird and wonderful signs out there. It’s full of pictures of signs, and in this case there is real truth in the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. Click on the link and see for yourself!
www.wordsmiths.net – this site is dedicated to writers of Derivative or Fan Fiction. It has lots of great resources and well worth a visit. Who knows, you may end up a contributer to it..
www.freerice.com – I’m not sure how to describe this site except say make sure you visit it. It’s a sister site of Poverty.com and aims to help ensure free education for everyone and help end world hunger. I’ve recommended it as the home page tests your knowledge of the meaning of words. For every right answer they donate 20 grains of rice.
When you are writing, be prepared to break up your routine when you need to encourage fresh ideas.
- You can jump on a website and play a quick game as a mental refresher, you may need to keep an eye on the clock though!
- Going for a quick walk, doing some housework, meeting a friend for coffee or chatting to other authors on a writing forum can give you enough of a break to get back into your writing.
Aim to have breaks of about half an hour at the most, and then go back to your writing. You should feel refreshed and find the words just start to flow again.
This is another post in my CREATIVE HABITS series where we’re exploring E = Energy habit.
