My Writing Process – May 2019

The last time I wrote about my writing process was May of last year, so that’s kinda cool. Here’s what my process looks like lately:

• I don’t wake up quite as early since getting a new job six months ago (5 or 6AM instead of 4AM), but my lunch is longer, so that’s when I write during the week. On the weekends, I can usually write two or three hours at a time. Last year, I had a daily word count goal, but I’m notoriously bad at sticking to self imposed schedules, so that went out the window pretty quickly. I seem to be most productive (long-term) in a state of structured chaos. I write, clean, and save money in random chunks when I think to.
• On average, I write about 500-700 words per 40 minutes.
• Contrary to what I said in my last writing process post, I do work well on an empty stomach. But definitely not before coffee, I’m not that crazy.
• I don’t free write before working on my main project anymore. I don’t feel the need to, because I’ve formed the habit of constantly writing about my thoughts, feelings, and ideas throughout the day. I highly recommend it.
• I still listen to low-fi hip hop sometimes when I write. I still wear the same over ear headphones. I have an ambient music Pandora station that I listen to as well. I don’t need music to write, but it seems to help me stay focused for longer.
• My manuscript is on Scrivener. I’m not quite satisfied with Scrivener, but I want to go more in depth into that in another post. Scrivener doesn’t have a mobile app for android, so I have to use other writing software when I’m away from home, which I will detail below.
• When I’m not at home I write on an app on my phone called JotterPad and then export the text files to my Dropbox account. I copy and paste into Scrivener from there. I’m sure this isn’t the fastest or most efficient way to do this, but its what I’ve gotten used to. I’ve tried to use Google docs in the past, but it pasted over to my Scrivener files all weird (AKA I’m too lazy to fix the formatting). Update! (5/17/19) I realized that I was just being an idiot and all I had to do was paste and match style to transfer my Google docs, so now I’m doing that.

I established a writing schedule last week because I’m almost done with my book and I wanted to stay on track. I also got bad news last week which sent me off into a comfort food eating and YouTube video watching spiral. I haven’t written as much as I intended to. These things happen! I’m slowly learning how to cope with my problems in a more productive way. Writing less is better than not writing at all.

I hope you have a great rest of your week. Thank you for reading!