Routines, writing or otherwise, are something I both crave and loathe.

Don’t get me wrong. I love routine, everything from seasonal changes to the way I brush my teeth. Routine makes my life easier. The day goes by without a lot of stressful decision making. I don’t lose the car keys. I always know where my purse it. Every Saturday is spaghetti night. Easy.

Also a bit boring. So it’s a good thing I don’t have a constant routine. Something is always different. When my mom comes to visit in January, she stays in the room where our house computer is. Normally, that’s where I do my writing. But for two months a year, that’s my mom’s room and she uses the computer right when my ‘normal’ writing time is. I have to move to the dining room table. I take all my writing files and How To books with me. You guessed it; we don’t eat at the table.

Speaking of writing, I like to outline my stories, even the flash fictions. It helps me picture the story; helps me stay focused on where I’m going with it and what I’m trying to say. Except, when I don’t. Occasionally, I get an idea and just write it. Quite often the story is so pressing, I write it out by hand, in a spiral notebook. Twice, I’ve woken up with a story in my head, full blown, and I grab that notebook and start writing.

My daughter says her father and I have OCD, because we like to do things a certain way. We don’t have OCD. We have a need for the floor to be clean and to be able to find things when we want them. Things get put away or cleaned up as soon as we finish our project. It’s a learned behavior. We don’t like it and get stressed out, when we can’t find things, or things get forgotten. So, we’re organized. Our life is calm. There’s no, or at least very little, drama.

So, afternoons, my husband naps and I write. Unless we’re travelling, or hiking, or hanging out with friends, and then… Well, you get the picture.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly thirty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!