Friday, February 26, 2016

My Writing Ritual

While looking for ideas for this week’s blog feature, a member of my Adventurer’s Guild sent me a link to a list of 50 different article ideas for author blogs. There’s a lot of great suggestions in this list, and I decided to answer one of the suggested questions today: what is my writing ritual?

While I often have writing sessions during the day, my most productive sessions are always in the late evening. After eating dinner, spending some time with my family, and helping with the dishes, I wish everyone a good night and go upstairs to my office. My loving and supportive wife always has the same parting words for me. “Good luck, have fun!”

Once I get to my room, I open my window so that I can hear the creek running past our home (it’s even better when’s it’s raining) and turn on my writing music playlist, a fluid collection of songs that I adjust daily. I then light a three-wick scented candle (Fresh Balsam, sweet fragrances give me a headache) and then turn off the light, leaving just the illumination of my laptop screen and my candle.

To help me keep track of my works-in-progress, I have five small, foam fish that each represent one of my five current projects. Each one has a different color, and I stack them in reverse order of how recently I’ve worked on that project. With the rest of my writing space set up, I start with the top fish first, get at least my minimum number of words on that project, and then work on whichever project I feel the most inspiration for.

Once I’ve finished, I turn on a small electric light and blow out my candle. After the aroma has faded somewhat (it can get pretty strong after a while) I invite my sweet wife to come and see what my word count for the day was. After that, it’s time to power down for the day. I crank up my gaming platform of choice, make myself a glass of Ovaltine, and relax.


Do you have a writing ritual? What puts you in the mood to write? Feel free to share in the comments below.

No comments:

Post a Comment