Things are really starting to heat up in my story (and not just because, as Tinti says, we’re now working on the story’s “sexy parts”). Before I worked my way through today’s lesson, I revisited everything in my story so far and did some tinkering, tried to smooth everything from yesterday into what I had from the first two days. And just like I predicted, it came very easily. It’s amazing how much better I work in the morning!

Today’s lesson was about escalation. Tinti taught us about Kurt Vonnegut’s ideas about story structure. She also has been giving us some really useful ideas about how to deepen what we’ve already got going on in the story rather than adding new stuff—new characters, new conflict, whatever. This really resonates with me because I definitely have that instinct sometimes. What happens next? How do I ramp up the tension? Uh, what about adding a new character or something? Tinti has helped me to realize that there’s already plenty to work with by this point in a story. I need to open up and explore those things I’ve already written in, not add new things to complicate the story on a surface level (but without adding any depth).

So, I actually spent a good three hours or so from start to finish today, but I feel like it was time very well spent. As it is, I even wanted to keep going. As I was finishing up my assignment for the class (developing the escalation of the conflict and deepening the characters), I figured out exactly what should happen for the climax, but I had to stop myself because we’re working on that tomorrow. I think if I’d kept going, I would have run out of steam, and that big, exciting climactic idea I had would have fizzled and dissolved. I can’t WAIT to get going on it in the morning, though.

For day three, we focused on opening up the propelling event, as well as exploring the characters in a bit more detail and adding just a glimpse of backstory. I really struggled with the assignment for today. I’m way less happy with what I came up with today than I was the first two days, but I still feel good about the story overall. I think during revision, I’m going to have to really spend some serious time with how to propel the story forward, how to really set the events into motion and create a sense that something significant is about to happen, that something unavoidable is on its way.

I think, though, that my struggles today resulted from the fact that I really procrastinated getting to work today. I work best first thing in the morning, and my creativity seems to reduce dramatically throughout the day. I didn’t get going on the coursework for today until well into the afternoon, and it’s now almost 7:30 and I only just finished with my assignment. I have the feeling that if I revisit what I have so far first thing tomorrow, before I even get going on tomorrow’s class, I’ll discover that I have all kinds of ideas on how to pull it all together.

I’m trying something new as a writer, something that requires completely changing my familiar writing habits: dictation. The other day, my friend Jolynn told me about some dictation software her parents gave her for Christmas. I thought it sounded worth a shot, so I looked up dictation apps for my phone and found some free ones I could try.

I work an hour and a half drive away from home, see, so even though I only have to go to campus twice a week, I’m in the car for six hours a week commuting to and from my classes. If I could spend even a small portion of that time “writing,” I would bump my productivity up immensely.

So last week I downloaded Dragon Dictation. The first day, I had trouble trying to get my mind into writer mode. I’m so used to typing as part of my process that I think my mind almost has a Pavlovian response to sitting in front of the computer and opening a document to write. Speaking the story out loud just wasn’t doing it for me, and I ended up just deleting the barely coherent crap I came up with.

But I refused to give in so quickly. Six freakin’ hours a week, I kept telling myself. Six hours to myself, without my little girl climbing all over me. It would be the perfect time to write.

So I tried again the next day I had to go to campus. I waited until a sentence formed in my mind—that’s usually the way I begin any writing session—and I turned on the app and just started going for it. I “wrote” for the rest of the drive to campus and ended up with about 1000 words to add to my novel, words I feel pretty good about, too. Of course, I’m still in the very early stages of trying this out, but I’m going to keep at it, and I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this is going to help me write way, way, way more.

I’ve been thinking lately about routines. I read a recent article—which, I apologize, I was unable to track down and link to—covering the writing routines of various well-known authors. While certainly different writers write in their own different ways, it was striking the number of writers who routinely write first thing in the morning every day.

Now, of course, these were mostly (if not entirely) authors who make a living off of their writing—a dying breed, unfortunately—so it was surely much easier for these writers, whose sole job is to write and write well, to find the time to write first thing in the morning for several hours (and many of them would then return to writing again later in the day). Most of us have jobs to get ready for and papers to grade, children to feed and chores to do. For most of us, it’s hard to justify writing first and foremost every single day.

But it got me thinking about my own routines and productivity. The period of time when I was unequivocally the most productive was when I was in grad school. I wrote two full length books, and several stories besides, during my tenure as an MFA student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Only one of those books got published, but still . . .).

While I was in grad school, Damien used to have to go in to work at like 6 or 6:30 Monday through Friday. I used to get up with him to spend some time together before he had to go in. Then, when he would leave for work, I would exercise, then write. The earliest I ever had to be anywhere was 10:00, and most days, I didn’t have to be on campus until later than that. So I handily managed an hour of exercise and a couple hours of writing before it was time to start getting ready to go in myself.

The result was that I wrote a lot more than I’ve ever written in my entire life. Some days, I would write more later in the day; other days, I wouldn’t. But either way, writing at the beginning of the day like that was an excellent way to start my days. I felt content with myself for having already gotten a fair amount of work done, and I could relax and just enjoy the rest of my days. And when I did write again, it was often because writing in the morning like that got me thinking about whatever project I was working on early in the day. Those thoughts would stay with me, simmering on the back burner, throughout the day.

After grad school, things got more difficult. I’ve tried a variety of different routines. For a while, I was setting my alarm for an hour before I needed to get up so I could write for at least an hour first thing. That worked well, while I did it—half the time, Damien would still be asleep, and the other half, he knew to leave me alone to write. It was a peaceful, relaxing way to start the day, sitting on the couch with my laptap and a cup of coffee.

But at other times, I tried different routines. I’ve tried writing at the end of the day instead of the beginning. I’ve tried not regulating when I write at all, instead regulating the amount of work I do. I’ve tried forcing myself to write for X amount of time per day, or an average of X amount of time per month. I’ve tried setting goals based on specific outcomes, such as complete X scene by the end of the day or finish X chapter by the end of the week. Nothing has ever worked as well as my grad school routine—getting up at around 5, exercising at around 6, and beginning writing at around 7.

Of course, a fat lot of good it does me to know that, now that I’m a mother. With a toddler added in to the equation, establishing and sticking to a writing routine has become almost impossible (note the “almost”). Lately, I’ve been writing after she goes to bed at night and using her nap time to grade papers and do other teaching tasks. This works well in that, at the end of the day, I have time, plenty of time, wonderfully unadulterated time, since Amie is asleep and Damien grades papers at the end of the day himself. But I’m tired at the end of the day. My mind doesn’t function the way it does earlier, and I find that, though I can write late at night, I can’t write as well or as much as I can first thing in the morning.

So I’ve decided I need to rethink and rework my writing schedule, establish a new routine, one that allows me to write when the writing’s good. I can’t write first thing in the morning like I used to—Amie wakes up when I do, unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to be quiet and not disturb her—but I’m sure there’s a way to find time to write during the day, while my mind is fresh and unclouded. The trick is that I need to just establish a routine—something that will work for me and Amie and Damien combined—and then stick to it, every day, without fail. I know routines don’t work for everybody, but they sure seem to work for an awful lot of highly productive writers, and I know from my own experience that they definitely work for me.