Day 17: Just Another Day?

The excitement of new beginnings is wearing off and today feels like just another day. For my morale, it's probably not the best thing ever, but at the same time it's what I want. This is the day job, after all. If I can slide through the days and suddenly have a complete novel months from now, I think I'd be happy with that. Not that I'll be literally sliding by if I have to pump out thousands of words weekly mind you.

Now that the routine is settling, I thought today I could give a little update to my daily schedule and how that's working out. In one of my early posts I went over a few different authors' daily schedules and picked out some positives from each that I wanted to incorporate into my own schedule. Here's how each of those is working out.

First was James Joyce. I've been using his tactic of writing at least one word per day to make sure I'm sitting down and getting something done every day. Overall, it's been working pretty well. I noticed a couple of days where I didn't want to do anything at all but getting that one word down turned into a few hundred words. Certainly better than doing nothing. This is a pretty common system that lots of people use, so I'll go ahead and add my stamp to it because I'm going to keep doing this as long as I can write.

Second was Brandon Sanderson, and there were a couple of tricks I stole learned from that he has mentioned before in interviews and on his YouTube channel. The first was go with my gut, and by this I mean that if something wasn't working for me and I felt it wasn't going to get me anywhere, then I shouldn't feel bad about trying something else. This has been working out well so far, and it's helped me avoid some really uncomfortable scenarios where I might feel obligated to write but can't. I'm not waking up at 6 AM just because someone said its the best time to write, for example.

I also tried out Sanderson's writing schedule, which involves an afternoon session of about four hours, and then a later session from 10 PM to whenever the work is done. He says sometimes he goes to sleep at 5 AM. In short: this sucks. It's actually the most brutal thing I've tried to do since starting, but thankfully Sanderson himself is an advocate of not doing things that suck. I'm going with my gut and never trying this again. One midday session and one evening session is good enough for me, thanks.

I've picked up a couple other tricks along the way that are purely my own, though I'm sure someone else has stumbled across them as well.

I like to do a warmup of about 30 minutes to an hour, and that's what I use this blog for. When I'm in a good flow state I can get better quality writing out much faster than when I'm not. I like to take my time with the blog and then carry the momentum I gather here into a project. I'll take a break at some point and edit the blog into something publishable, then hop back into the project. This is working really well, and I highly recommend a warmup if you want to steal learn from this trick.

The last scheduling tip I'll dare to share is that I also like to put a snack break in each session. Usually I get to a point where the words stop coming as easily, or I'm not sure what direction to take, and at this moment I'll go and prepare a snack. By the time I sit back down at my desk, the blocker is cleared or weakened and I can push through. Maybe this is not as much of a scheduling tip as it is a writing tip, but still. If I work in the extra ten minutes for a snack break it tends to make the rest of the session go a lot smoother.

I'm sure I'll add to these tips and tricks as I continue to write, and maybe even toss a few out. If my schedule changes drastically in the future I'll make another blog post about it, but for now this is how it is. Like I said, it feels like just another day now, so I'm going to go and make the best of the routine. I hope your day goes just as smoothly.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley