What Daily Routine should You Follow as a Beginner in Fictional Writing?

Morning or Night?

A good idea is to experiment with what time of day suits your mind. Are you a morning writer or an evening writer?

What subject do you write about? If you can nail down a theme that floats your boat, makes you feel fired up, then you’ll probably be one of those writers who loves to keep writing till the dawn cracks and the sound of the morning bus rumbles along the road.

Some of the Themes

• Love
• Redemption
• Courage and persistence
• Revenge
• Coming of age - also known as, “Bildungsroman”

All of the themes have threads that lead away in a twisty turny way. This is why we can write about them again and again, without sounding like an old record.

Your Reading

Read a lot of novels. I have read great books which inspired me, and taught me what great writing is all about - then I went and found out as much as possible about the author. How do they live? Where were they brought up? Why do they write?

Read Bad Books and Good Books

When you read a badly written book, and there are plenty out there, ask yourself why it’s so bad.

Keep Studying the Great Writers

When you study other successful writers, you discover that they are all different, they all have a tough time of explaining how they work. I think it's because they don’t have a set routine that helps them get the job done, they have an enormous, and seriously pressing desire to write a novel and finish it - most of them have day jobs, or did for a long time, but they burned the candle at both ends and that was their routine.

Experiment with Your Routines

Your routine should be to experiment with yourself. To sit and write and see how it goes. Ask yourself many questions about what is working and why, and what isn’t working and why not.

Often, it’s the “why not”, questions and answers that give us the best feedback on our methods.

If you can know your theme, or at least subjects that pertain to a theme, then you will find motivation to write each day without fail. If you discover that you love writing, you will then do everything to continue to write each day. If you discover that it brings you joy, and you can’t wait to get up and start writing, that you must know what happens next, then you’ll have found your routine.

Routine is for factory workers, desire is for writers and artists.