Every writer has a different routine: a special location, drink, or time of day that puts them in the right creative mood. I thought you might be interested to see what my daily writing process looks like as I craft the second book in my upcoming trilogy, The Reinhold Chronicles.

I write around 8 a.m., though it can shift a little depending on the day.

Every writing session begins with a visit to my favorite writing blog, K.M. Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors.  If Katie has a new post—as she did today—I read it; if not, I peruse an older post on structure or character arcs. This helps focus my mind on important rules and tools relevant to the part of the book I’m currently writing.

Then, I boot up Spotify to find a soundtrack for the session. Today, it’s James Newton Howard’s score for The Village, featuring Hilary Hahn on the haunting violin solos.

Next, I open up Evernote to glance through my extensive note and outline files (nope, you can’t see even glimpse those! Hehee…). I also use Evernote to store photos for location inspiration, such as this lovely shot:

Finally, I’m ready to write! This summer, I fell in love with the writing software Scrivener. Once you get over the learning curve, it’s a powerful tool for simplifying and empowering your writing process. As you can see, I have the project target box open, which shows me how far I am both in the book and the particular session. I’m over a third of the way done with the book, but I haven’t written a word today!

I typically edit whatever I wrote the day before before writing anything new.

I click Scrivener into full-screen mode with the background faded in slightly (so that I can peek at my Evernote if I need to). Then I ask a prayer of blessing over my work, press play on the music, and start writing.