Writing Process: 4 Things I Do Other Than Physically Writing

Someone asked me how much time I spend writing. These days the answer is not enough. If you asked me a few years ago, it would be 3–4 hours. Right now, there are so many distractions. The election and the pandemic take a lot of time and energy, and I know that we are trying to distract ourselves from it when we aren’t watching the news. Personally, we are looking for a new house so every time I sit at the computer, I start searching for houses. That always ends up taking a longer time than I would like out of the day.

So the time I spend writing each day is anywhere between zero and an hour or so. This got me thinking, is time spent in front of a computer typing or writing in a notebook the only way we count writing? I believe there is more to it than that.

What I spend my time doing that’s part of my writing process, they all end in “tion.”

Conversation

Being able to have conversations with different kinds of people is important to reach audiences with your writing. I want to say about 75% of my writing is inspired by a conversation I had with my friends or family. Being in a circle of late 20s, early 30’s there a lot of focus on self-improvement. Or maybe nowadays, people are more open to mental health conversations. All I know is that I am continually having hard…