Rhythm Over Rigid Writing Routines
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[00:00:00] There are so many writing gurus out there that say that you have to write every single day if you want to be a real author.
[00:00:07] But let's be honest, your life does not follow a perfect schedule. and here's the problem. When the routine breaks, the shame kicks in.
[00:00:14] That's when you start to worry that you'll just give up and then everybody else will start saying, oh, wow, I told you so. So how do you actually finish your book and still have a life?
[00:00:25] Build a rhythm that fuels your writing instead of being in that struggle loop.
[00:00:31] Welcome back to another edition of The Creative Life in Motion Show, where we don't wait until we reach our goals to be happy. We fall in love with who we are being on the way.
[00:00:41] My name is Karen Wilson. I'm an indie author and a story coach,
[00:00:45] You probably remember me saying a time or two that I wrote my first book in 90 days. My schedule was not perfect. However, I did have a rhythm.
[00:00:55] And I had a system for when I had days that like life gone in the way. I don't really think life gets in the way. I think life is just gonna keep on lifeing. And when you decide that you're gonna be a writer, an author, or anything that is, you know, working in your spare time, I put that in air quotes. Uh, you kind of start to coexist with it.
[00:01:21] It's not one or the other. They become a being of you. So I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later in the episode,
[00:01:28] Today I am gonna pull back the curtain on how routines can actually start holding you back and what you should do instead. If that's you,
[00:01:37] Let's start with what consistency actually looks like when you stop fighting with the clock.
[00:01:44] Most people think that consistency is about word count and it's not.
[00:01:49] Think about writers like Stephen King. They have these famous, intense routines. Repetition is a form of mesmerism, and I've felt that before in my writing. Maybe you have too, but he's not just hitting a goal, he's training his brain to reach a deeper state of mind.
[00:02:07] A lot of times we call this in the writer. World and maybe in your artist, artist world or whatever it is that you're doing, we call this like a state of flow, really hard to find. But when it's there, it's really good. When you show up at the same time. Or in the same way, what happens is your brain stops asking like, should I write today?
[00:02:30] Decision fatigue is gone. It becomes more of a question of what should I write today? The decision of writing is off the plate because you're showing up consistently, and that's exactly what you're doing.
[00:02:43] Here's also a secret within it. Like Stephen King, I think he states that he writes like six pages a day, and that's his job writing. So maybe sometimes it'll be editing six pages a day. My dog is crumbling behind me in the background. I don't know if you can hear that or not, but here's the secret. Okay?
[00:03:04] So when you build that touch point, your subconscious keeps writing. Even when you're not writing, which is a beautiful thing.
[00:03:13] So the walk that you take after a session, that's not procrastination, that is writing, that is part of it. Your, your brain is still composing everything that has just flown through it and onto the page or onto the keyboard, wherever you write.
[00:03:30] Consistency is just signaling the brain that this work matters. So think about that for a moment when you show up consistently. It's telling your brain that this matters. What does that mean for you? Okay, so. Now
[00:03:48] I wanna push back for a second on that advice of consistency and talk about how flexibility can actually be a superpower.
[00:03:57] JK Rowling, she wrote Harry Potter in a cafe. In between parenting her children as a single mom,
[00:04:05] She did not have this beautiful, cozy writing routine every single morning of five hours in this beautiful space where we set everything up and have this serendipitous flow state. No, she was trying to balance it all. Her flexibility became her superpower. She was able to turn on that writer and turn it off like just like on a moment's notice.
[00:04:31] Isn't that a beautiful thing?
[00:04:32] A schedule can be very, very fragile.
[00:04:35] Here's the thing, when you have this consistent schedule set up, if you miss a day, it can cause you to spiral and feel like a failure and then miss another day, and then shame starts to set in.
[00:04:51] But a rhythm. A rhythm is forgiving, right? A rhythm bends and it breathes. So JK Rawling, she was able to get into her rhythm anytime she needed to. Some days your rhythm might mean 2000 words.
[00:05:12] Some days it might be rereading a paragraph and then going for a wor walk, right? Some days it might just be voice recording, something that hits you right when you got out of the shower.
[00:05:25] All of this is valid.
[00:05:26] What if you stopped building a routine or tried, stopped trying to find a routine and just started getting into your rhythm instead?
[00:05:37] Another thing that a rhythm inspires is my next point, identity based writing.
[00:05:43] The thing that actually kills writing and stops the ability of you to finish your work. It isn't lack of discipline. It's losing the love
[00:05:52] when your routine is so rigid that a missed day feels like failure, that can hit.
[00:05:58] And what happens is, is you're building an avoidance habit instead of a writing habit.
[00:06:03] James clear the writer of Atomic Habit Habits. He talks about shifting the identity to shift the habits.
[00:06:10] The shift or the habit is in building something like I need to write a thousand words. The shift is in an identity shift, so I am a writer. What does a writer do? A writer needs to consistently return to the work.
[00:06:25] Even one sentence in your note apps works because you're continuously. Hanging on to that identity of the writer. We talk about this on the show all the time. We don't wait until we reach our goals to be happy. We fall in love with who we are being along the way.
[00:06:42] So talk about that in the context of a book, right? If you're. I'll be happy when I get this book published. Well, what about the now? What about the serving? The being that's on that way there you are the same person. There's no reason to separate them. So what does that person do to today to ensure that outcome tomorrow it's in who you are being in the moment?
[00:07:10] I love this one. This is actually my favorite one and I've used it. So many different ways. Um, when I became a runner, like I was like, oh, well what does a runner do? A runner's gotta run. A runner has to jog. A runner has to take days off. A runner has to fuel well, all the things instead of. You know, worrying about am I gonna burn enough calories?
[00:07:35] Am I, am I, you know, all of these things that exercise brought, I decided to take on the identity of a runner. And in by doing that, all the things that I wanted to happen in that identity, they just happened because I'm being that person now and all. You can have all of these collections of identities and still be a hundred percent you.
[00:08:02] Because it's how you do it and how you apply your identity to it. What's your future vision of yourself and what does that future vision of self need this today version to do to get there? And what is she or he saying to you right now?
[00:08:25] When your only commitment is to be the person that continues to return, to do the thing that you're wanting to do it, it becomes a lot easier. It can be five minutes, it can be 20, it can be four hours. But if you are daily putting service into your piece of work, your writing, then you're doing so yourself a favor as that identity.
[00:08:53] Now, I talked to a lot of people, especially as I've been finishing up my second book and how I had to, I had to return to that a few times. And there's kind of like a comeback ritual. A lot of people ask me, well, I, you know, I have this book. I keep writing it, and then I put it down and then I leave it.
[00:09:13] And I, I just wanna finish the book that I keep starting. And I get that because this one that I just finished, it's like that, it's kind of like a little book. It's only 35,000 words. And I wrote it and, and then I rewrote it. And then I rewrote it again. And, and every time there was like this space between.
[00:09:34] And so I have like, what I like to call a comeback ritual because life just keeps on lifeing, right? We know that.
[00:09:43] One of the most important things that I'm gonna say today here is, and, and you might find. That you've been here to is the most dangerous place for a writer to be is you're at this intersection of a routine that's broken and a shame spiral of I should be doing that. And that's a lot of times where writers quit.
[00:10:05] Now I always say, you, if you need to quit, you can quit because it will be there when you return. And according to lots of other very successful writers and authors, that's sometimes part of the process is the marination is like that actually makes it juicier and better because you are a different person later than you were.
[00:10:31] When you wrote the book the first time, and I certainly found that in my case,
[00:10:35] we have to get different layers of our work out of us, and sometimes it's about putting it away to marinate for a while. Stephen King actually talks about this, his marination process of about six weeks once he's done once a book.
[00:10:52] You need a comeback ritual. Mine is just leasing up my shoes. And going for a walk and starting to muse on the muse, you know, and starting to go forward into that ideal person of what I wanna do with my goals, what I wanna do with my writing, and then just put myself back in that head space.
[00:11:14] For you, you might have a ritual of, uh, sipping some coffee in the morning and writing down your goals or, you know, having some tea in, in the sun set and, and. Writing some things down for me, it's always takes place in nature and going for a walk, it's without any headphones in like, I like to do it in silence so that I can actually hear those nuggets being dropped into my brain.
[00:11:41] And if you've been away from your manuscript for weeks or even months, I know it can be overwhelming getting started again. I actually have a specific process to help you get that momentum back. I'll share that with you in a minute.
[00:11:53] So I wanna ask you this is, are you in service of your writing or is your writing being held hostage by perfect conditions? Your writing doesn't care if it's five minutes in a parking lot. It just cares that you show up.
[00:12:07] Here's your challenge for the next week, commit to five minutes a day. Just five minutes a day. And if you're already doing that up, whatever you're doing by five minutes a day, not a chapter, not a word count, just show up every single day in service of writing.
[00:12:25] The routine is just the container, right? The comeback plan is when we get off track, it's gonna help you come back and the rhythm, that's your daily slice of life. Isn't it?
[00:12:38] If you have a rhythm that fits your real life, then your comeback plan is so much easier. Just lighten up a bit. You know? It doesn't have to be so rigid, it just needs to keep going so that you feel good so that you feel like you're making progress on something, especially in the creative world.
[00:13:01] Sometimes it feels like things go so slow.
[00:13:05] Are you a rigid scheduler or like, do you like things like a lot more flexible or are you kind of like in the messy middle like I am where you're, you try a little bit of both.
[00:13:18] If you're sitting there with a book that's gathering dust, digital dust on a Google Drive or physical dust in a notebook, then you need to watch the video restart your unfinished book. I'll make sure that it's linked in the description below. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, if you are on YouTube, it's right here.
[00:13:40] And if you're not on YouTube, you know that's where the comments live.
[00:13:44] . Make sure you drop a comment below so that we can deepen our discussion on this topic,
[00:13:49] and thanks for hanging out with me. See you next time. Bye.
