Today on the blog I’m going to do something a little different, a few weeks ago over on my Instagram stories, I posted an ask me anything type story and I had a few questions come in and I wanted to share some of the answers here on the blog. Today, I’m going to answer one of the questions. The person that asked me this question wanted to stay anonymous so I’m not going to say who asked as per their wishes.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals and if so what are they?
The answer to this question is pretty simple, but it’s a topic I don’t talk about a lot here on the blog. So that’s why I chose to start with this question.
To answer the question, the short answer is Yes, I have a few writing rituals if that’s what you want to call them. I tend to call it a writing routine, but for today’s sake, we will call it a ritual.
Before I start writing for the day, I try to make sure I get everything else out of the way, that way I’m not distracted. A distracted me isn’t one that can get words on the computer screen. Like for today for instance, I’m writing this blog post and getting all my images for social media completed and ready to post before I sit down to write for the day.
The next thing I do is make sure my desk is cleaned off and ready for me to work. A messy desk and I don’t get along, kind of like the distraction thing above. So my desk is cleaned off while I work. The only things on my desk, other than my computer, when writing is my plotting journal and my bullet journal where I keep track of my writing counts per sprint. Oh and of course my candle, but we will talk about that in a bit.
The third thing I do before writing is light my candle, I don’t really know why this became a thing for me to do before writing, but it’s an important step for me. I know when it started just not the why. I started doing this a few years back for NaNo, it kind of helps me get into the right mindset I guess.
After that I pull up my document in Scrivener and get it ready, then I pull up my music playlist for said project and hit the play button. Once all of this is ready to go, I pull up my timer ( I use two different timers usually I switch between the Wonder Space App and Forest App. Love them both!)
That’s mainly what I do before I start writing, after that, it’s time to get words onto the screen. I tend to write in sprints of either twenty-five minutes with five-minute breaks, but sometimes, like today I’ll be mostly doing forty-five-minute sprints with five to ten-minute breaks.
So there you have it, my writing ritual/routine before I write. I hope this answers the question. I’ll be posting another Ask Me Anything up on my Instagram stories next week, so if you have a question, please make sure you look for that. If you haven’t followed me over on Instagram, I post there the most and it’s a great way to get to know me more, CLICK HERE to follow.
Hope you all have a great weekend!
