Routine Your Life And Results Will Follow

Geek to author or trying to be. The writing part is the hardest part of becoming an author. If you don't do it, you won't be one. Period. Write often, write all the time, no matter what it is write, write, write. That's what you read and hear about to motivate authors. Write.

However, for those aspiring to be creative with their writing and work to build it up most of the time they have other aspects of their lives that require focus and attention as well. A regular job, spouse, kids, activities, health, eating, sleeping, reading, leisure. All the things that get in the way. Trying to introduce a new, life altering activity into that already set routine is near impossible to keep it there. Sure you can start out hard, write for a few weeks, produce a few good stories, then trail off quickly.

That's what happened to me.

That's what happened to me in the past as well. Finding the right way to keep writing they way I want to write in my life and keep it there. I haven't made it part of my routine. However this year I have adjusted my routine in others ways and it has paid off tremendously and I owe my changes to my focus on writing.

At the start of this year I wanted to focus on writing and as part of that I started to schedule my days out. I stuck to it for a while, good few months, then summer hit and I waned away from writing but I found myself adjusting to another new activity that is now routine. Workouts. I started to exercise, slowly at first and now I am in the gym every other day for at least an hour. Now I feel bad when I miss a day and make myself go whether I want to or not and each time I am glad I stepped in the door when I leave. The return on that investment is I have lost over 30 pounds and still dropping.

I didn't force that change, I integrated it. Now it's my routine. Writing is next to figure out how to get it to work for me. Maybe writing at night isn't my thing. Perhaps I should try getting up an hour earlier and write before the kids get up or take a break in the office and lock myself in a conference room for an hour each day or every few days to write. My exercise routine took a while to figure out how best to work out and what worked and what didn't for me. Writing is no different.

I think I read somewhere it takes a normal person about 3 days to get used to something new and upwards of 3 weeks before it's engrained as a routine. It won't happen over night.

What works for you won't work for me.
Do whatever you can to maximize your brain's ability to output creativity, the rewards will come eventually and when they do, the work to build the routine will seem trivial.

Time to turn the page.