It’s no great secret that I don’t spend all day, every day in one place. Travel is my passion, my way of recharging, my way of getting the most out of my writing. I love the newness of it all.

I love the sun.

So whilst that makes me sound like the committed adventurer who lives some kind of scattered life, the one thing I value above all else is routine in my writing. These things, sadly, do not seem to mix very well.

Some days I’ll be writing from my home desk, other days it will be a hotel room. Increasingly I am finding myself fond of knocking out a few hundred words in a coffee shop by hand. Regardless, it means that some of the rigidity in my schedule that I require to actually 1) produce material, 2) stay sane, is becoming more difficult to maintain. My output, unfortunately, has drifted off a little and I need to find a way to get it back.

Solutions

A couple of things have started to help get this back on track:

Being honest about my energy: If travel commitments mean a late night and exhaustion one day, getting up an hour later should be allowed. This doesn’t always work for me though, so I’ve found that getting up and focussing on more routine tasks, like website maintenance and reading articles, is a better way to get those tasks off my list that I would usually do at the end of the day or weekends.

Write when I don’t feel like it: I prefer to do creative tasks first thing in the morning when everyone else is asleep. When that’s not possible, as above, it means either stuff doesn’t get written or I make myself do it later in the day. It’s still all about carving out time. As this isn’t my naturally creative time, that means spending more time in places that do add a spark of inspiration. Hence the increase in coffee shop exploits.

Becoming better at taking notes: If I’m on the road, with a mixed up schedule, ideas come to me at odd times. Flashes of inspiration or sentences that I know will one day become the start of something bigger. I’m trying to make sure that these always get captured in a notebook so I can dig them back out when the right time comes.

So that’s what I’m trying to achieve. Creating some kind of balance in a crazy world. I feel like I’m still grasping the basics of this, so I’m totally open to new ideas and suggestions if there is something working for you?