My Writing Routine 2024

First of all, the rough draft of this blog is supposed to be called as “My Writing Routine 2023” in my journal. I’ve written the past one in 2022 in both of my journal and my previous blog when I was only a stay-at-home-wife who did creative writing full-time. Now that I have a part-time job (with a crazy work hour start, you’ll see), I was intrigued to write the new writing routine. I also decided, that maybe I would give the update every year, as my life condition certainly is very dynamic.

So, yeah, this is how my daily routine basically looks like.

03:30

Waking up. Yeah, in this crazy hour…because of my part-time job.

04:20

Approximately in this hour, I leave my flat to my workplace.

08:45

Approximately in this hour, I arrive home. The first thing I do after that is mostly having my (second) breakfast. And a bit of random stuff; scrolling Reddit, watching YouTube or sometimes journaling if there’s something I want to write about.

So, after this, I’ve kind of having like “two different shift” regarding of my writing session. Let’s call them simply “morning shift” and “late shift” haha (coming from an experience working at a chocolate factory in my early-20).

MORNING SHIFT

10:00

I begin my writing session, this is approximately the earliest time so to say, and of course with a cup of black tea and sugar (because I begin to mistrust supermarkets honey).

Mostly it takes 2 hours, and then I can call it a day.

Anyway, if I’m in the mood to do my writing session in the library, usually I begin at 11:00 and stay for ~2 hours (somehow I can only stay there maximum two hours).

LATE SHIFT

This is usually happening if either it’s a rough day at work so that I need a decompression time by slacking around after arriving at home, or if there are lots of household chores to do (such as going to the market place for grocery shopping directly from the workplace or doing laundry). After lunch and everything settles up, I can finally write at…

14:00 / 15:00

…the latest I can begin. Also minimum taking 2 hours.

Sometimes if I have “writing frenzy day”, I’ll do both shifts; morning and afternoon writing session. This writing frenzy however needs another decompression time, so after that I’ll do…

16:30 / 17:00

…taking for a short walk while listening to my 500-ish Spotify songs collection (mwahaha!).

19:00

My major down-time for going to bed. Mostly reading, sometimes I journal or just daydreaming until I fall asleep.

20:00

The most time I usually have fallen asleep if I don’t take a nap during the day. Otherwise, I can stay up late until 21:30.

WEEKEND WRITING SESSION

Due to my job, the crazy routine impacts my circadian rhythm in the weekend as well. I’m mostly, without any alarm clock, awake between 03:45 and 05:00. If I wake up around 4 a.m., I usually just lay in my bed and do nothing – reminds me of Le Guin’s writing routine haha (but I was thinking if she had been also daydreaming about nonsense like me). Around 5 a.m. is when I have the mood to get up. Mostly journaling after that, but sometimes I can go into my writing session – the time when I’m straight from the bed is always my favorite time to have creative writing. For the weekend, I can do writing almost for 3 hours without any break! (If not because of my hungry tummy, I would continue write obsessively.)

Then, either I can call it a day, or do another “writing frenzy day”. If the latter, I can continuosly write with several breaks for lunch, brief household chores and taking a walk outside. Then going to bed, mostly automatically, between 19:00 and 20:00. Without any nap in the day, my latest attempt to sleep is around 21:00. But even with a nap, 22:00 is my limit. Bless my job, I guess…