Daily Process

2010.11.15 | Screenwriting
15:

What is your morning process as a writer?  What steps do you take upon waking to get started?  I’m always curious how writers do what they do to get on the horse that day.  It can various day to day, but my process is pretty solid from day to day. I’m not sure if it speaks to me more as a person than a writer, but here it goes:

1) Wake up. Simple right?  If I want to sleep in, it is imperative that I do not touch my glasses.  Even if I want to get up and use the facilities, my dog will think it’s time to start the day if I put on my glasses. Weird. I’m not sure who owns who at this point.  I’m a night owl, so on an average day is waking up at 10 am but I’m usually up until 2 am.

2) Dress (in my finest sweats) and walk the dog. Nothing will happen until the dog gets walked. Again, who owns who?

3) Put away the bed. I’m in a studio and if I want to walk without tripping, the sofa bed has to be reset.  I’ve got it down to a system so it’s not so much of a delay to my day but more of a meditation exercise of squeezing bedding, pillows and sheets in to their respective places.

4) Email. Looking for fires, I screen my emails to see if I need to answer any right away.

5) Coffee.

6) Surf news before work, which includes answering miscellaneous emails.

  • cnn.com, consumerist.com, variety headlines, la craigslist writer’s categories, digg.com, twitter, then facebook.

7) Work begins. This is about an hour after I wake up. Whether I’m writing, researching or web design, I still take less time to get “ready” for work than your typical nine to fiver.  I usually stop two hours in from work to eat. I’m rarely hungry upon waking and this is one reason I’m happy to work at home. The flexibility is there to do what you want, when you want to do it.

I naturally end work about 8 or 10 hours later depending on any side trips I make to my business mailbox or to grab lunch.

What sites do you visit on a daily basis as a writer? Not the occasional sites, I have a million of those, but every day?

comment

Hi,

I get out of bed, switch on the desktop PC – I have a laptop but feel I’m at work when I switch on the desktop. Make some green tea, possibly some porridge, still procrastinating at this point, check the usual; FB twitter, Shooting People etc, then I read through what I wrote yesterday, tweak, and almost seamlessly continue from there. Sounds easy. Most day’s it’s not…..

@petewrites

Peter ( February 28, 2011 at 9:21 pm )

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