Other people’s writing routines seem to be for writers what honey is to a bear. That search for that golden method that could change everything. In this post, I will talk about my ever-changing writing routine, my hunt for efficiency, and how it helps me getting things done!

“Marc? You only wrote one book. Who made you the expert?” You might ask the illuminating screen of your device of choice you use to read this post, and I will answer, “Nobody”. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an expert on writing routines. I am not planning to (consciously) get on some kind of high horse. Nor am I here to judge people that stick true to that one writing routine. In my opinion, the writing routine is good if it works for you specifically. So if you’ve been writing in a specific way for more than 20 novels and you never found the need to change it, you probably struck gold when it comes to finding your writing routine. Now with that out of the way, let’s move on.

Brief history lesson

I used to write when I was in college. There was no writing routine, there was no method to my madness, there was only me with a story in my head, a piece of paper, and either a pen or a pencil. I just went to town on it and wrote everything down that I wanted to tell, and then I continued with my teenage life, doing whatever was the hobby of the month. Fast forward about eight years, give or take, and I had found a real insatiable hunger for knowledge. I still liked to write, but it was primarily technical writing or research papers about new forms of online media, software systems, etc. It came with the sector I was working in and the hobbies I had at the time. I always liked to know the ins and outs of how things work. This helped me explain it in more layman terms later on to the marketing department, customers, etc. I wasn’t in IT, but I was not a marketeer either. I always worked in that grey area where I was positioned in a marketing department but was always neck-deep in technical projects, like setting up websites and e-commerce systems, being able to read programming language but unable to write it, etc. Something they call these days a ‘technical marketeer’ if I understood that job description correctly. But I am derailing… 

So, researching papers taught me to dig deep into all kinds of data to find that one thing worthy to write a whole article about. That hunger for knowledge never went away either, and I have learned way too many things that will not contribute to my day-to-day life. At the time, I wrote primarily in the morning because I had a clear state of mind with ultra focus before 10:00. Most colleagues didn’t arrive until 9:00, so I often had 1-1,5 hours all to myself—zero distractions. That last part is the most important one, zero distractions. Depending on the time of day, I can have serious issues focusing on writing. So I had to pick my moments carefully if I didn’t wish to edit the document more than two times.

Writing the first novel

Let’s fast forwards again. This time we arrived at the moment I start working on Blood & Tradition. It had been 17 years since I last wrote actual fiction — not counting the scribbles for D&D RPG campaigns. As a 17-year-old, I was writing things for fun with pen and paper, and I thought it would be cool if I ever had enough material to bind it all together and make a book out of it. As a 34-year-old, my approach was totally different. I wanted to write a novel, so I had to create all the material. I approached the project as I approached any other project in the past 7 years. I started by doing my research on everything that was required. 
I started wondering what the word count was of an average novel, what structure would work best for my story concept, and so on. I dove headfirst into the rabbit hole. The suggestion for a daily word count also really appealed to me. I am a firm believer a deadline is more beneficial than harmful, especially in a creative process. Besides, the daily word count aligned really well with my search for optimization. I had laid out all of the viable options, routines, and methods I found in front of me. Then I took a critical look if these methods would work for me, and which I had my doubts about but was willing to try. The rest got scrapped without any second thoughts. 

I started to work on my synopsis, character background, created location write-ups, and once that was done, I made the biggest mistake I could’ve made. I am a sucker for challenges and pushing myself. It’s in my opinion, the only way to really learn because you will be making mistakes. You will fall flat on your bee-hind, and have to reflect on what went wrong and how you can find a solution for the situation. The big mistake I made was putting a highly ambitious deadline on the project. I started the project in June, and I wanted it all done by the end of September, 4 months for a newbie to PUBLISH a complete book. The deadline itself wasn’t the problem. It was the obsession with optimizing the planning. I would be cheering about completing work two days ahead of time instead of contributing that cheer to the cool stuff Mos, the protagonist, had experienced. I never had self-published a book. So, there was a multitude of things I didn’t take into account. I wanted to do all the artwork and graphical design myself. I needed to set up a website, of which 80% of work had to be done by myself, in my opinion. I think you get the point that the planning was ambitious.

I had decided that the story I wanted to tell required between 90.000 and 100.000 words. For the sake of accountability and tracking, I used 100.000 words as my project’s word count. This number was liquid in my eyes because if the story was done at 75.000 words, then that would have been fine with me. This project was an experiment for me, so I wanted to acquire data, and I could only do that with static values. I picked a date I wished the manuscript to be done and divided 100.000 by the number of workdays I had left until that date. My daily word count came down to 2300 words. However, I was ambitious and made it 2500 words.

I started with writing in the morning after my wife left for work. I had the house all to myself, everything was silent, and I sat down behind my computer between 6:30 and 7:00. I would then write until I had reached a daily word count. I had soon found out that I could write a lot more per day. This was the start of a transition where I viewed my daily goal as a bare minimum. Self-inflicted pressure was rising because when I looked at my schedule, I could easily shave off half a month by the end of the second week on this project.

Three weeks into the project, I’d changed my writing routine. I found out I was often working from 7:00 till 12:00 without sprints. I took a single break around 10:00 if I wasn’t too deep into writing out a scene. I went from a blank page to what I believe people call the first edit. There was an actual story on the page. It included some wordsmithing and required spelling checks but still had some rough edges here and there. I moved the deadline up by two weeks, and the daily goal changed into a chapter-based one. I was able to write one chapter per day on average. Based on the data, I was on a roll, and nothing could stop me… 

August was fast approaching, and I dreaded its approach. It was not because of the deadline I set for Blood & Tradition. I had all confidence that I would make the deadline because I was on two-third of the way. It was because my family was finally allowed to scatter my father’s ashes on the 1st of August. We had discovered he was terminally ill in August the year before, and he got ripped from our lives within six months. Because of the pandemic, the casting ceremony had to be postponed for seven months. 
The loss of my father — I carry it around with me each and every day. The casting ceremony had a way bigger impact on me than I had expected. I was unable to write anything for the whole month of August. My mind was scrabbled most of the time, and creativity was hard to find. I didn’t really care about the book, and it coincided with the marathon-in-the-middle. Writing became difficult, and I considered myself lucky if I reached 800 words per day. I was unable to write in the same way I did for the past two months. 

How I managed to plan these two situations to happen simultaneously, I don’t know. It was a massive oversight in my planning. I don’t know if that was due to me burying myself in my work so I didn’t have to think about my father’s passing, or if it was just straight-up arrogance that blinded me from identifying this potential pitfall. While reflecting on it, it was probably a mixture of both, with the former being prominently in the foreground. But to be honest, I couldn’t plan for the effects it had on me. That said, deadlines are sacred in my world. I had just moved up my deadline and created a daily schedule that was chapter-based. The only thing I could do was push the deadline back, but that didn’t sit well with me. Every day we moved further away from the deadline, I would become more frustrated. The pressure was on. Under normal circumstances, I would excel during crunch-time, but not this time around. I’d set the perfect trap for myself and walked straight into it.

The search for efficiency

When I was writing Blood & Tradition, I did several experiments to find my preferred writing routine. I would change my writing routine almost every other week. It even got to the point where my wife only rolled her eyes, sighed, and mumbled “again!?”. I was chasing efficiency. I was looking for a method that would allow me to write clean and quickly. A writing routine that allowed me to write two or three books in a year. To be honest, this experiment is still underway. 
When I was working on Blood & Tradition, I have learned a lot myself, the methods that work for me, and those that don’t. Ambitious deadlines for one are no longer allowed. I get really cranky and frustrated when I don’t make a deadline. My wonderful supportive wife deserves better than that, so I now aim for a three-month window, not a specific date. I force myself to have at least two days off in the week to move away from the 24/7 work schedule I had. Everything revolved around the story. I would wake up in the middle of the night to write a paragraph or two, I would zone out during a conversation because I would get inspiration for a scene. In a sense, I was always working.  

Currently, I am working on my second novel. Funnily enough, I started around the same date as I did with Blood & Tradition last year. At the request of my surrounding, this time without a tight writing schedule. They requested a laid-back work schedule, which I followed for a couple of weeks. It didn’t really work out 100%, as this is my job, not a hobby, but I have everything a little bit more spread out. 

The routine 

I still create my pillars that should hold up the whole story. These pillars are my protagonist, antagonist, the setting/location, and the issue at hand— which I often call story concept. These days I actually work with a first draft, or at least what I believe is the first draft. I am not a native English speaker. I didn’t study creative arts. So, at times I am somewhat confused about the terminology. When working on Blood & Tradition, I went from a blank page to what most would call the first edit. I would be wordsmithing while the line was hitting the page. This was a rather labor-intensive task, but in my opinion, my favorite way to write — and very similar to how I wrote as a 17-year-old. However, it is no longer sustainable for me to use that method. I tend to get bogged down within the details a lot easier these days than when I was writing Blood & Tradition. This is also my second book, and my search for efficiency has not ended. 

The final chapters of Blood & Tradition were written using voice dictation and were revised the next day. This method allowed me to deliver two chapters per day. I want to see what kind of effect this workflow would have on the complete development cycle of my second book. Therefore, I decided to write the first draft using only voice dictation. There is barely any dialogue. Some scenes only have three lines as I require more research about the architecture styles or cultures. To be honest, it’s a hot mess and very foreign to me as I never wrote anything in this manner.
This new method might have a welcoming benefit. When writing Blood & Tradition, Mos decided, based on his personality, to do something opposite of what I had planned. Which kind of derailed the story and forced me to go back to the drawing board. I had to throw away two ‘mostly finished’ chapters because of it and rewrite a couple of others. I hope that the ‘rewriting’ can be kept down to a minimum by using this method. 

One thing remains untouched, all characters in the book will be role-played during the writing session. Every character, big or small, will have a character portrait written for them. It explains something about their personality, goals, flaws, fears, etc. Based on this data, I will role play the characters to the best of my abilities. This does mean that an extra, or the main protagonist, could temporarily derail a story. But I prefer to write character-driven, not plot-driven. They need to have a certain sense of realism and personality to them even though they might be an orc, elf, or other fantastical creature. 

At the time of writing, I have finished the first draft of Act II. So I estimate it will take another two weeks before I can start working on the first edit. Around that time, I will be able to get a first impression if this method will actually shave off some time on the development cycle and create a better product. 

This post did transform a little bit into a postmortem article for Blood & Tradition. I did want to write a postmortem one day, but subconsciously, some of it already made its way into this post. Even writing this post, and editing it, helped with reflecting on previous work and used methods. It is, in my opinion, invaluable knowledge to have, as it is the only real way to improve yourself. Try some new methods every once in a while, especially when you are in a creative slump. The change can sometimes give you that new perspective on a topic and help get you back on track.

//Marc