I Tried JK Rowling’s Writing Routine for a Day

[Music] hi everyone welcome to the channel you clicked on the title of this video so you know what's happening today I'm trying JK Rowling's writing routine regardless of what you think of her politics this woman single-handedly popularized y a as a genre and got several generations of people worldwide back into reading fiction again and that means that she's doing something well in her fiction writing and today I want to try to find out what that is because the building blocks of actually writing fiction are each day your daily writing and what you're doing and so I want to try her writing routine one of the major reasons that I picked this writing routine for this specific Saturday is that it complements what I'm actually trying to accomplish in my own project and basically I am behind I am behind in my word count and my content for the deadlines that I've set for myself they are technically arbitrary but they are being squished by the presence of nanowrimo which will be coming up in November in like a single month so basically doing this writing challenge gives me an excuse to actually sit down and write because if I wasn't doing something like this I would be like oh I have this whole Saturday I'll get to it and then I would procrastinate I would do my chores I would go run errands I would like look on Instagram gram for an hour because oh it's Saturday I don't want to do that I want to write I want to write my butt off today and the biggest thing about this writing routine that I found online about JK is that she just sits there for like six hours and writes and that's exactly what I need and I was like this is perfect but I know I wouldn't do it if I was left to my own devices let me walk you through a couple of the points that she outlines about her actual writing routine number one she wants to always start working before 9am um it's 9 15. I tried my best I got up I uploaded a YouTube video I worked out I showered I got ready but it's 9 15. whatever um I think the point is just to get started as early in the morning as you can and that is what I will be doing so that's number one number two is having a space for writing I don't have that so much um because I live in a one bedroom apartment but I have a couch where I always write I like just writing on the couch because I want to be as comfortable as possible but I don't have the ability to kind of have like a dedicated writing room um that she has which I wish I had but one day number three is music we have that she listens to classical music I don't listen to classical music but I think the main point is that it's instrumental there's no human voices she can't write with human Voices playing in her ears I cannot either so we're gonna do instrumental music but I listen to like movie soundtracks and just kind of like instrumental like fantasy scores um so I'll be doing that just what I usually do number four is to drink a copious amount she drinks tea I do not um I only drink coffee and so I can't drink six to nine cups of coffee like two drinks of tea in a writing session which is frankly a lot but we'll be making do with just my one cup of coffee and supplementing with just hydrating with water in general she takes short breaks until 3 P.M I have a couple short breaks in mind um I don't really like to take short breaks but sometimes you need them especially if I don't know if the writing's not going as well so we'll see if I need to take those short breaks but I have one or two planned one of her actual writing tips for her routine is snacking which I love so I will be making popcorn as she suggests in the middle of my Saturday and snacking on it while I write so that's exactly what I'm going to be doing she usually takes those short breaks until 3 P.M and then she'll take a long break but she won't stop before 3 P.M and she says that that's kind of Ideal for her is six hours of writing with tiny breaks in between so that's what we're going to be trying out today I have somewhere to be at five and so stopping at three is probably exactly when I'll need to stop and I don't think I'm going to be able to write after that this is pretty much perfect for my day one of her pieces of advice for writers is to read a lot which is everyone's advice but I'm taking it seriously and today on the menu we have six crows which I just started reading uh I know I should have read it a long time ago but I didn't and I'm really enjoying it as always I can't get through this book I will I will slow going it's taking a long time so I'm reading other snappier things in between but it's always like on the it's always there I'm always like picking it up every once in a while so those are on the menu the piece of advice from JK herself is treat writing like a literal job even if it's not your job yet and that's what I'm doing today my job's not quite a nine to five but um it's pretty close so I've worked that for the last five days and now I'm going to write from nine to three and treat it like it's literally a job that I have um and so I think that that's pretty applicable to where I am in life right now is I actually do want to treat this like a job but I just have to squish it in between my actual job and lastly let me end on a quote from her and then we'll get writing it says the wonderful thing about writing is that there's always a blank page waiting the terrifying thing about writing is that there's always a blank page waiting I don't think that's necessarily encouraging all the time but uh but I will focus on the first part of it which is that that's the wonderful thing is that the blank page is waiting for me and I'm going to go find it okay let's go right like the woman who created Harry Potter [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] okay I don't know what it is but I am flying through this right now um it's only been 45 minutes and I've already written over a thousand words that's like way better like usually I'm like hit a thousand words exactly at the hour this is just going and it is a really fun scene so um and I immediately got into it there was like no lag time no distraction this is working that's great I'm gonna go take a mini break I'll be back in like five minutes [Music] [Music] okay I just hit a 100K in my manuscript which is uh really good for a month and 24 days I feel pretty great about that speed wise I also feel really good about the manuscript itself so that's good it doesn't mean that I've written that much today but we don't have to talk about that now I'm just going to keep working and we're just not going to think about numbers but yeah right now in my manuscript I have a hundred thousand and seventy three words so we are on our way to finishing this thing I think it's gonna end up around 150 000 which is I think I can make that because usually my projections have gone up to like 180 000 but I I think I can do 150 if I really put my mind to it so then I only have to cut 50 000 words and that would be great anyway I'm getting it back to writing but 100 000. that's all book right there it's a whole book [Music] foreign [Music] okay just took him a break to go release some monarch butterflies I will show you the footage of that but I have to get back to writing [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] I had another mini break and I made popcorn as JK herself would do and I'm gonna eat this and I'm gonna get back to writing I'm not going to give you a word count update because I want to write a little bit more before I do but I have made popcorn so there's that [Music] [Music] thank you foreign okay it's 4 P.M how do we do I wrote 3500 words in the last seven hours um well technically I started at 10 so that's bad uh I didn't start very early and I certainly didn't start before nine and then I finished around like 3 30 because I have to get ready to go and so I don't have any more time to spend on this but I have to admit I got distracted in the middle of it um I took like maybe an hour or two that wasn't writing time however it also helped me get a lot written because that was the focus of my day was I'm going to write and nothing's gonna come in my way at least initially and that's the biggest problem for me is actually getting started and deciding that it's going to be the biggest priority of my day especially when I have a Saturday and I have the whole day off and there's so much that needs to get done and so for a Saturday that I actually have stuff going on this was a really good word count I honestly wanted to get up to my like 6 000 range which is something that I think I can do and I could have done today if I had kind of taken those extra two hours and really dedicated myself um but other things popped up and that's just kind of how life goes right like you can't control everything around you you can't control the other people in your life like you just have to be a person and go with it and sometimes writing isn't the most important thing in your day and that's okay because we still fit in writing I still fit in other things I'm still going to go to the social event overall this was great for me because I love the Deep work aspect of writing I love having tons of hours and just sitting down and knowing I can go on and on and on this writing routine I think really works for me but only on Saturdays because I have a day job and only on Saturdays when I miraculously have nothing else to do before the evening and this is something that doesn't come around very often so I probably won't be able to do this again for a long time but for the day that I was able to do it I made a lot of progress and that's what I wanted out of this is to make some progress so I finished a whole chapter only one chapter um and now I'm I'm moving on into the next chapter and honestly this one is the one that I had been planning for a long long time like a really long time it's a huge plot point and it is one of the biggest plot points in the bad guys closing portion so it was a very emotionally taxing thing to write I'm glad that I can say I did that and I'm even moving on past that which means that I'm making progress in this book one of JK Rowling's big phrases that she says um for her writing philosophy and her writing advice is except the failure is just part of the process it's not just inevitable it is not just you know a part of life it is a part of the actual process of writing and today wasn't a failure but it didn't go as planned and so I think that's a good thing to remember is just that days like today are baked into the writing process and that's okay and we still had a very very good writing streak today okay that is all for this video thanks so much for watching I really appreciate you guys liking and commenting down below your writing experiences whether you're drafting or whether you're plotting or whatever you're doing I love to hear about that kind of stuff and as always subscribe to see what other content I'm putting out mostly it's about Drafting and this project I hope you stay and you watch the rest of my journey and also go watch the other stuff that I've done my other drafting videos and my other writing routine videos I did one on hurricane murakami that was super fun watch that if you like this video okay that's all for today thanks so much for watching I will see you in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: Create With Mer

Views: 20,722

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Id: UBEmKulo90k

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022