A (Caffeinated) Shopping List for Super-Productive Writers

I’ve been writing for my entire adult life, and making a living as a writer for about ten years. A few things stand me in good stead:

• a morning ritual
• a quiet, well-appointed space
• the right equipment

Here are the things* that help me get it done, day after day, week after week, year after year.

First, the morning ritual.

the story of comfort and coffee

Maybe certain ascetics perform better while walking on nails, but for me, the morning writing ritual involves getting seriously comfortable. It starts with putting on my flannel robe (mine is from Garnet Hill, but Land’s End makes good ones too), because I live on a canyon in Northern California, and my house is always cold in the morning.

And then, of course: coffee. It’s easier to get up and start writing immediately if the coffee makes itself. You can go Keurig for this, of course, but I prefer my coffee fresh ground. For that, I buy my beans at Philz near my house(Silken Splendor or Dancing Water are my favorites — both medium roasts with a hint of chocolate).

Every night, I set up my coffee maker before bed. These days, I use the Breville Grind Control, which can be set to grind the beans before I get up in the morning. I did tons of research before I bought mine a year ago, and the Breville is still, as of this writing, the only model under $300 with a burr grinder. I also love this one because you can choose how strong you want your coffee, and you don’t have to fill the water tank every time. If you’re not a stickler about the grinding, Cuisinart makes two very affordable models with a blade grinder: The Cuisinart DGB-900BC Grind and Brew and the earlier model, the DGB-625BC (under $100!). Both are programmable.

If you must pod out, Green Mountain Dark Magic is my pod of choice; it’s dark enough to stand up to the brewing process so you end up with an actual cup of joe, not a watery cup of misery that sends you straight back to the warmth of your bed.

Then, the space

blankets, light, and a desk

I head downstairs to my home office, which is even colder than the upstairs. I keep a wool blanket, made in Finland, from Finnstyle on the sofa, but I don’t sit on the sofa first thing, because I would just fall asleep). I turn on my desk lamp, which mimics the sun and makes me happy, or so they say. Mine was a gift and I can’t find a brand, but The Natural Spectrum Sunlight Lamp from Baltoro is under thirty bucks and promises to improve your mood (there is supposedly some science to back this up, but I’m prone to believe it’s the coffee, not the lamp, that improves my mood in the morning).

I get to work standing up at Ikea’s Bekant Standing Desk. As far as I can tell, it’s the least expensive standing desk on the market. It took me about an hour to put together, and it wasn’t difficult, and I only had a few screws left over. (Hmmm). I keep the desk in standing mode almost all the time (I’m standing right now as I write this). I’m not sure how much I would love it if I had to crank it up and down multiple times a day, because it’s pretty noisy and the crank might fall apart after a year. But it’s great for the price if you want something spacious and modern-looking.

If you work on a laptop, this portable sit/stand desk, just under $40, is ugly but serviceable. For me, the important thing is to begin my day standing. I don’t like rolling out of bed and going straight to a chair. Maybe TMI, but when you stand to write, you can work in your plies and squats throughout the day.

If you want a full sit/stand desk for your desktop computer but can’t get to IKEA, the Luxor Stand-Up Desk seems like a great alternative for under $400, without the assembly pains and with a sturdier crank system.

My last home office, by the way, in my previous house, was in a tiny third bedroom, and my first home office, in an apartment in the Castro, was in a closet. But one place I still write sometimes is my bed. If writing in bed is your style, all you need is a laptop or notebook and pens (see below).

Finally, the tools

notebooks, pens, paper, and an app or two

Notebooks

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’ve tried dozens of apps, and there are a few I swear by, but for me, analog is still king. Maybe it has a little something to do with the fact that I grew up in the seventies, but the biggest draw of paper notebooks is that things don’t get lost on paper the way they do when you’re using a bunch of different apps for note taking. Also, there’s just something that feels right about writing with a pen.

For keeping track of projects, I swear by Behance Action Method journals. These are hardcover notebooks, available in different sizes, that are organized according to the action method from the creative minds behind Behance. The pages provide space for prep/focus, notations, and action steps, which you check off as you go. Bechance makes good-looking moleskine type notebooks, but I prefer the spiral bound books with perforated pages, as well as the action pad. When I’ve completed a page, I put it in a 1" binder, labeled according to subject.

I keep one binder for each novel and each non-novel project: a binder for Fiction Attic Press, another for the Novel Writing Toolkit, another for my writing classes, etc. But on my desk, I keep a single action notebook, and I separate projects within the notebook using post-it file tabs.

I do a lot of my writing on my Mac, but most of my novels begin in a physical notebook. For ages, I used wonderful spiral-bound hardcovers by Chronicle Books, but they stopped making them. Now I use moleskin notebooks, which are classic and wonderful and always make your book feel very book-like. I have moleskine notebooks going back years for various novels and journals. I love the red, pink, and orange ones, which make me happy and energized and are a reminder to not take yourself too seriously.

Pens & Pencils

The only pen I really use anymore is the Uni-ball Vision Elite, which I buy by the 5-pack in assorted colors. I mostly use the blue and black, and my husband and son steal the others. When I’m doing copy-edits or page proofs, I use Color Lib pencils from Flax Art near my house. But Dixon Ticonderoga Erasable Checking Pencils are a good alternative (just don’t edit your novel in red — it will bring back nightmares of middle school).

Apps

There’s one app I swear by: Pomodoro for iPhone. For years, I’ve used Pomodoro on my phone to help me stay on task (and away from email) for 25-minute segments throughout the day. I’ve recently started using Be Focused Pro for Mac, since I spend so much time at my desktop and that’s where I’m most likely to be led down the rabbit hole of the World Wide Web. Be Focused Pro allows you to manage tasks and set goals for your pomodoros, and it synchronizes with the Be Focused app for iphone and ipad.

It’s hard to be focused when you can’t find anything. I waste a lot of time looking for things in my house (keys, socks, my wallet), so when I sit down at my computer, I want everything to magically appear just when I need it. For that, the Alfred app for Mac is fantastic. You hit a certain key set, like the space bar+shift, to bring up the Alfred bar, which is as simple and clean in design as the Google search bar. Then you type in what you’re looking for — be it a file, an app, the settings menu, whatever — and it magically appears. If you have a PC, you don’t need this, because Windows has this functionality already. But, as you know, Macs are like your difficult, passive-aggressive friend who is sooo stylish but rather more complicated than necessary. Alfred makes that friend less complicated.

So that’s it: a few things to help you energize your morning ritual, make your space work for you, and start getting the words on the page. In the comments, I’d love to hear your tools and tricks for a super-productive writing day.

*Note: The links that lead you to Amazon are affiliate links, so I get a minor kickback when you click through those links — thank you for helping to support my coffee habit! No other links are affiliate.