7 Tips to Create a Killer Writing Routine

Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash

Every writer has a routine. And other circumstances and obligations usually dictate that routine.

Many aspiring writers don’t have the luxury of writing full time. They have jobs, family and other activities to attend to. Like friendships, church and getting the oil changed in their car.

Luckily for me, I quit my corporate job back in March 2021. So I’ve been self-employed as a writer for 6 months now.

When I had a job, my routine looked drastically different from it does today.

But today, I have the freedom to write whenever I want. However, I choose to use my morning hours, almost immediately after first waking up to write, rewrite, edit and focus on my author business. (Oh yes, if you’re an author and publish books, you must consider it a business if you want to succeed.)

Here’s my writer’s routine in a nutshell:

1. Wake up and get out of bed — Most mornings I drag my wife out of bed, too. Unless, of course, she’s exceptionally tired and won’t budge.
2. Make coffee and take my supplements — I can’t live without a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. If I didn’t have that boost of caffeine, then I’d be like the walking dead. I also take my vitamins, supplements and magic pill. (I’ve been taking Armodafinil for years. Usually a half tablet to wake up, stay alert and boost my focus. Sometimes a full tablet if I didn’t sleep well the night before.)
3. Check my email accounts — I don’t care what the experts or critics say about checking email immediately after waking up. I do it for a reason. I want to clear my inbox, usually from all the junk, and really want to see if family, like my mother, emailed me. If my mom emailed, I’ll usually respond to her right away. I see this simple act of replying to her email as my first act of writing.
4. Time to write — From when I wake up to when I work on my writing projects, about a half an hour passes. By this point, I’m fully awake, still sipping on the last of my coffee and ready to make words flow on the page. At any given time, I’m working on multiple writing projects. It could be a new poem, writing a blog article, a newsletter update to my email list, or writing copy for a landing page.