Fabian Pattberg

This is the situation: I am home alone with the dogs tonight, my wife is away on a business trip and I am planning to spend the evening going about my business.  I want to write a blog post but I for some reason get distracted on a regular basis. Twitter updates, Google+, sports pages, Facebook, Google Reader and so on.

This seems to have happened quite a lot over the course of the past 12 months with so much going on in my life I noticed. Being a practically minded, I therefore tried to come up with a “routine”, as I call it, for these times when I am tired from a full days work but really want to write a blog post.

I hope it will also be useful for your writing. Please be aware that is my personal routine and you most likely will go about your writing in a different way. This is routine and it works for me……

The routine: 

1. When you get home from work or any other activity before writing, make yourself some food and eat. Writing with an empty stomach does not work in my experience.
2. Once you are finished, choose the place in your house/flat where to write. Do not make the mistake of writing in the living room with a TV, stereo, etc. If you have the possibility to go to your own room or the study, do that. Any kind of distractions will only hinder your progress and will frustrate you.
3. Make sure you take enough water with you and most importantly, take some chocolate with you. This is the kick you need when you get tired.
4. Once you are all set up and online turn ALL social media channels off. You need the internet connection but you definitely do not need Twitter, Google+ or Facebook meddling with your attention span.
5. Do not think about what you want to write about too much. Writing should be fun and something you enjoy. So just start to write and I am sure everything will come together at some point.
6. Write about something interesting you have come across recently or which is important to you. Yes, consider your audience but let the writing lead you to what you want to let your readers know.
7. Review your post progress after 2-3 paragraphs. I usually than change most of the post and title again because I somehow ended up with a slightly different topic to what I started out with.
8. Once the post is finished take your time to check every single word of it. It is easy to just hit the “Publish” button. Wait for a while or even walk away from the computer for a few minutes to get your mind of this blog post. Then when you get back you will possibly notice something you missed or which is not writing about. This simple action will boost your quality of the blog post immensely in my experience.
9. Hit the “Publish” button when you are proud of what you see in front of you.

It is that easy. Enjoy and have fun writing!