When I was working on Bodies in Motion, I was in grad school, and broken-hearted, so I was going to bed very early (8 p.m.) because I had nothing else I wanted to do in the evenings. While it was miserable emotionally, this turned out to be terrific for productive writing. I developed a ritual:
– wake up at 4 a.m., when the world was dark and quiet
– make a cup of tea
– go to my computer and set writing playlist playing (something wordless)
– light a candle
– open file of the book
– re-read last paragraphs drafted
– write 1-2 hrs
– have breakfast
– go to class / work / get on with the rest of life
That worked gorgeously for me, and I wrote most of a book that year. (In retrospect, I think the difficulties I have with focus due to ADHD were really helped by being in a dark, quiet place. I wasn’t diagnosed back then…)
It’s harder for me to go to bed that early now; I have a husband who likes to talk to me before bed (and fine, I like to talk to him too), and up until recently, had children who needed putting to bed (at 13 and 16, they’re shockingly self-sufficient now, and I don’t quite know what to do with myself). But I have a revised ritual:
– wake up at 7 a.m. (I’d prefer 6, but it’s hard to get to bed consistently by 10 p.m., and if I don’t get eight hours of sleep, I’m useless the next day)
– make a cup of tea
– take meds (one consequence of being almost 52, instead of 32, is that I now have 5 meds I take every morning, sigh…)
– go out to the writing shed (if weather permits; there are about three months in Chicago when it’s either too cold or too hot to work out there)
– set writing music playing
– open current writing file
– re-read last paragraphs drafted
– write 1-2 hrs, usually taking breaks every 30-45 minutes to do a bit of gardening
– somewhere in here, eat something
– exercise (at least 20 minutes on the treadmill, which got added to the ritual when I realized that if I didn’t consciously move my body more as I aged, bad things were going to start happening)
– go to class / work / get on with the rest of life
And it’s not that I can’t write at other times — sometimes I come out and write in the evenings. Sometimes I write on planes while I’m traveling, or in hotel rooms. Sometimes I write in the office at work (very rarely). But I write most consistently and persistently when I stick to the morning ritual. If I don’t do writing first, even though my days are often quite unscheduled, somehow, it just doesn’t happen at all.
Do you have rituals that work for you, that help you write more persistently?
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Note on sacred writing time: It’s been pretty essential for me to treat writing the way I would other work or meeting appointments, carving out time in our family shared Google calendar that’s blocked for writing, so the family knows not to bother me then unless someone’s bleeding or on fire. If I can’t do that regularly during the week (and sometimes I can’t), I’ve tried to go away for a few days each month, staying at friends’ houses, attending cons and mostly treating them as writing time, etc. That can be particularly good for finishing up projects. Do you block out your writing time? In what ways?
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Note on the shed: We built the writing shed when the kids were small, when the house was full of chaos, and I realized having a clean room away from all of that would make a huge difference. It’s obviously a tremendous privilege to have such a space — in prior years, I often worked in coffeeshops, or in whatever quiet corner of the apartment I could carve out. Before building the shed, I would sometimes get an AirBnb for a few nights each month, mid-week so it’d be cheaper, and close enough that I could come back in the morning and get the little kids dressed and fed and on the bus. It didn’t work for daily writing, but at least it let me create a few days of sacred writing time each month. Where do you like to write?
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Note on avoiding distraction: I use various programs to keep me from going to time-wasting sites when I open my computer — I’ve used Self Control and Focus in the past; I’m currently using Cold Turkey. If I can externalize my willpower, I don’t have to use as much of it. 
I’m not so tempted to do things on my phone, but if I were, I would probably leave it in the house when I went out to write, to make it even easier to avoid temptation. Any programs you recommend?
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