This last week, I’ve written consistently every day, and met or exceeded my wordcount goals each day. I didn’t just suddenly decide I was going to do this (although those who saw me make a snap decision in my Discord server may have come to that conclusion) I’d begun preparing for it over a month ago.

These last few years have been full of disruption for me, both physical (moved twice, from Ohio to Texas and then from apartment to a home) and mental (husband’s health issues and my own which were less profound, as well as my last child moving out). While I’ve been able to write, it’s been erratic and faltering. I’ve been making art, but that uses a different part of my brain (so to speak, I’m not certain of the neurology in the physical organ, but I do know that art and writing come from different places in my psyche). All of this, plus an increased sense of frustration at my own inability to force myself to put words on the work in progress, turned into a cycle of defeat.

I realized, somewhat late in it, that part of the issue was that my day job made my desk a place where I did not want to be at the ‘end of day’ when I was trying to make myself write. So I set up a writing desk in my art room, once I had that organized and cleaned out. There, I could go, shut the door as a clear signal to be let alone, and write for an hour. I can do a thousand words (the current wordcount goal) in an hour. I also realized that transitioning from the day job right into writing was a bad idea, so I took the time to schedule an intentional rest period in between them, long enough to let my mind fully disengage, not so long that my writing time would interfere with making-dinner time.

In other words, after some self-analysis and soul-searching, I deliberately set up a mental and physical place for my writing. Everyone’s version of this is going to look different. Part of the trouble I had was imposing old routines into the new home/job/family situation, and those were no longer a good fit and didn’t work for me. I had to break down what the new routines I’d fallen into were, and along the way make deliberate new patterns that would accommodate my writing times. For that end, I used a time management and habit-former app to help me, as I’m dreadful about making habits. I also had to make a space for the writing in my physical realm, one that wasn’t the same spot I’d been sitting in for nine hours at the day job. I wound up making several spots, from the comfy chair my husband calls my nest in the bedroom, to the walking desk on my treadmill, to the secretary desk in a bookshelf which wound up being the most effective for me. I have options, and options are good. I can get up and move from one to another – or I could also sit at the dining table, the little table in our shared office, at the living room couch, there are so many options. I had to convince myself they were all good, I wasn’t locked into one space.

Finally, I had to simply sit at a keyboard and start typing. The first day or so I wasn’t worried about being good, simply being there for the thousand words. Which, to my surprise, came easily and with more as the story flowed for me. Taking the slow, deliberate time to set up myself had worked. I focused on the novel first. Then I switched it up to the short story I’d promised for the library charity anthology, and it came out even faster as I’d already done the reading for research, then let that have time to percolate through and come out as a story with a suggestion from Jim Curtis to crystallize my initial character idea.

Now, I have to work through the non-routine days, to give myself the writing time in those, as well. I headed out for a trip to Austin, then Houston, this weekend. I’m traveling with a friend who does the driving, so in theory I can write while we’re on the move. Yesterday we had a waiting period, and I managed my writing goal during that, because I had writing tools with me and ready. Today I’ll see how writing in the car works for me! I plan to finish up that short story, which is a good thing, as a success will embolden me to keep pushing forward on the novel, and that will trigger more happy brain noises which will keep me writing.

Really, that’s what works for me. Giving myself the time to think, without the distractions of endless scrolling. Giving myself a space, both physical and mental, to write in. And telling myself that it can suck, this is just a warm-up, trips over into real creation very easily. I’m at a point where I decided I needed to focus more on the writing again, but it wasn’t that simple. It took a lot of time and work to set this last week up, and knowing that there will be a day in the future where I’ll fail, I can plan to allow that without pitching myself right back into the frustration cycle.