The Myth of the Perfect Writing Routine

Perfect Writing Routine

A writer friend of mine—brilliant, messy, wildly imaginative—wakes up every morning at 5:30 a.m. to write before work. Two hours of quiet. A cup of tea. No phone, no internet. Just the soft light of dawn and his pages.

I, of course, was both impressed and mildly ashamed. My mornings look more like a rushed scene from a sitcom: brothers screaming, cat yowling, coffee reheated three times, a half-written sentence dangling somewhere in my head while I search for a clean sock. If I get thirty solid minutes of writing before noon, it feels like a victory. A fluke, even.

For years, I believed the reason I wasn’t writing more, writing better, was because I hadn’t found the routine. The sacred structure. The system that would unlock the version of me who actually gets the damn work done. I chased morning pages, Pomodoro timers, strict word count goals, even writing retreats that promised transformation. And while some of those tools helped for a while, none of them delivered what I wanted most: ease. Consistency. Proof I was doing it “right.”

What I’ve learned, though, is that there is no perfect writing routine. There’s just what works for you right now—and even that will change.

Routines Are Helpful, But They’re Not Holy.

I love structure. I crave it. But when we elevate a routine to something sacred, something essential, we run the risk of building a temple on sand. Life shifts. Bodies change. Grief hits. Jobs get demanding. Kids get sick. The exact conditions we built our writing life around may no longer apply, and suddenly we’re left feeling like we’ve failed, not just as artists, but as people.

The myth of the perfect writing routine tells us that if we could just figure it out, we’d finally be productive. Inspired. Disciplined. But writing doesn’t come from discipline alone. It comes from attention. Curiosity. Making space—even just a sliver—for the part of you that wants to speak.

Your Writing Life Can Be Seasonal

What worked for you in the summer may not serve you in the winter. The routine that carried you through one project may completely collapse under another. That’s not a flaw—it’s a rhythm.

Some seasons will be quiet and contemplative. Others will be chaotic, generative, and surprising. The key is to stop forcing yourself to write like someone else. Pay attention to the shape your energy wants to take. Maybe right now, you write best in bursts. Maybe you’re finding poetry in your phone notes during your lunch break. Maybe your novel needs long, luxurious afternoons—ones that only happen once a week.

That still counts.

Show Up However You Can

The perfectionist in us wants the calendar, the ritual, the golden hour. But the writer in us—the real one—is often messier. Hungrier. They’ll take what they can get. They’ll write on receipt paper or in the carpool line. They’ll talk into voice memos. They’ll think through dialogue while unloading the dishwasher.

If a routine helps you do that, wonderful. Keep it. If a routine becomes another excuse to not write, ditch it.

The Truth of Routine

You are allowed to write imperfectly. You are allowed to show up late. You are allowed to build your practice around the life you have, not the one you wish you were living.

The real routine—the only one that matters—is this: return to the page. However, you can. However often you’re able. Let it be enough.

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A Fiction Break

Previously published in Thread Magazine:

Sick as a Dog

By Trinity Richardson

Sick as a Dog

I wrote this poem after I watched Oppenheimer with my ex, who I thought I was going to marry, not because of anything either of us said or didn’t say, but because they called me honeybee and never made me cry, and with a newly discovered clarity I thought, oh, so this is what it is liked to be loved, and the only other love I can compare it to, truthfully, is my childhood dog who, despite his size, bit viciously when he thought my dad was hurting me, and slept at the foot of my bed every night, and came to me trembling when sick and I would hold him close to my chest under the covers until his shaking stilled and I remember holding back your hair as you threw up, thinking, I would never do this for anyone else and then, abruptly, I will never do this for anyone else, feeling a sort of perverted glee at the fact of you sick

in my bathroom, the solidity of you in my arms–mine and no one else’s–and I chose this title, ultimately, because it sounds like something you would say, accent on the o, sick as a dawg, and I would laugh, loudly, and pull you close to my chest.