My Writing Routine (And Why It Changes Every Month)

People love to ask about writing routines. They want to hear that I wake up at five in the morning, drink black coffee, and write for four disciplined hours before the world interrupts. They want a formula. A system. A blueprint they can replicate.

I am going to disappoint you.

My writing routine is a living thing. It changes shape depending on the project, the season, my mental health, and whether or not I slept the night before. Some months I write every single day. Some months I write in explosive bursts separated by days of nothing. Some months I stare at the screen for an hour, write one sentence, delete it, and call that progress.

What I can tell you is what stays consistent. The non-negotiables. The things that are true no matter what the routine looks like on any given week.

First: I always write to music. Always. The playlist goes on before the document opens. It is the signal to my brain that we are leaving the real world and entering the story. Without it, I am just a person sitting at a desk. With it, I am inside the scene.

Second: I do not write in order. Almost never. I write whatever scene is loudest in my head. Sometimes that is the climax. Sometimes it is a quiet conversation in chapter three. Sometimes it is a single line of dialogue that I do not know where to put yet but I know belongs somewhere. I trust the process of assembly. The scenes find their order eventually.

Third: I read before I write. Every single time. Even if it is just ten pages of someone else's book. Reading puts me in the right headspace. It reminds me what good prose sounds like. It loosens something in my brain that allows the words to flow instead of being forced.

Fourth: I take notes constantly. Not just about the current project. About everything. Overheard conversations. The way light hits a building at a certain time of day. The expression on a stranger's face when they think no one is watching. All of it goes into the notes. All of it shows up in the writing eventually.

The hardest part of my routine is not the writing itself. It is the transition. The shift from being a person in the world to being a person in the story. Some days that transition takes five minutes. Some days it takes two hours. Some days it does not happen at all and I have to accept that and try again tomorrow.

I used to feel guilty about the inconsistency. I used to compare myself to writers who produce a book every three months with clockwork precision. But I have learned that my process is my process. It is messy and unpredictable and sometimes frustrating. But it produces work I am proud of. And that is the only metric that matters.

If you are a writer reading this and your routine does not look like anyone else's, good. It is not supposed to. Find the things that are true for you and protect them. Let everything else be flexible. The words will come. They always do. Just not always on your schedule.