A daily writing practice is essential to becoming any kind of successful or productive writer. And part of that can be finding a writing ritual that makes you ready to start your writing work. Some people who don’t much know about the writing life seem to think you can just wait around for inspiration. But you have to have ways to seek inspiration out and drag it home by the hair if you want a daily writing practice, not just a once-in-a-great-while habit.
Clearing the area is a part of my writing ritual. I don’t have children or other family members to worry about, but I do have a lot of cats. Some of whom are willing to jump in my lap or on the keyboard just when I really get going. So, I start the writing day by catching the in-the-house cats and putting them on the back porch. I recently streamlined this ritual by serving up some canned cat food on the porch, which made most of the cats who need to be removed from the writing area remove themselves.
Some writers, I understand, don’t need a distraction-free environment to write. In fact, some need the distractions. Which is why some people write in a coffee shop or a public library. If that is you and you have such a place handy, make plans to write there at least some of the time.
Music is essential to some writers, whether from a CD or radio station. I’ve heard that author Stephen King actually bought a local radio station to keep it playing his writing music. Music helps if it is functioning as a kind of white noise cancelling out the distractions. If the music itself is a distraction, best not to make music a part of the ritual.
Models. When I write my poetry I use models. If I am writing a sijo poem, I first copy out a sijo from one of my poetry books. I then use it as an inspiration when I write one of my own. Or else I ignore the model entirely. When prose writing, writing out a whole novel would be a bit intimidating. But I have once copied out bits of a novel I liked before beginning with my own work.
Keywords. I have been writing poetry using keywords since long before I ever knew that some poetry writing teachers recommended it. I glean keywords from a variety of sources, books, encyclopedia articles, prayerbooks, television commercials…. Or dull political speeches.
The important thing about your writing ritual is that it has to be a ritual that works for YOU, not some imaginary ideal writer that is NOT-YOU.
The other thing is to stick with a possible ritual for a while. Doing certain things every time you sit down to write is a way to train your brain to be ready for writing when you do these things. That makes writing a repeatable action you can do every day until your writing is finished.
My Antimatter Life 