Creating A Ready-To-Write Writer's Room

I’d say an guesstimated 50% of building a writing habit is having a good writing set up. The reason being → The more accessible and prepared you make your writing space, the more naturally you'll flow into your drafting process.

I’m thinking back to the mantra, a clear desk = a clear mind. And how a cluttered desk is full of things that will compete for your attention. 

It’s one of many reasons readers prefer reading on e-readers over their phone.

It's easy to pull out your Kindle and immerse yourself in a good book. Yes?

Your writing room (and I’m not solely talking a physical room here) should be just as approachable. 

For this, I borrowed inspiration from TV writing rooms, or a writer's rooms. You might here me mention these often because there’s a blueprint there that takes writers from a raw idea to → a finished, compelling, sometimes award winning narrative. Obviously skill comes into play here too.

But a lot of writers (I struggled with this too) are stuck on the actual writing part. This editorial is going into details on how to overcome that using TV show writing rooms as an initial blueprint and then scale it down our solo writing experience. 

The key here is a structured, somewhat strategic approach to storytelling. I’m very detailed oriented I like to dissect things and figure out how they work. 

So today I’m zipping you into my writing room — and onto my writing desk. To see how I've adapted this.

If you haven’t already I recommend grabbing my authors supplies checklist. For a look at everything I’m toting in my writer's room.

So a few things on the agenda, by the end of this editorial you’ll know how to create an frictionless writing space for better writing habits by:

• Clear (tailored) Space + Establishing a Vision w/ Prep Work

• Developing a Structured Workflow + The Tools (for this)

• Using Prep Files Intra-Draft

• Having a Constructive Feedback Loop (Even if you're doing this yourself)

• Post-Project Reviews

Clear Desk + Clear Vision (Prep Work)

Some people thrive in a little desk clutter. I don’t.

I talked about this in my editorial last week on doing a brain dump. I want to get to Mental space 0 and ready to reload. This includes having a desk that has the necessities.

For me, that’s my laptop, writing utensils, a seasonal candle, and my planner. I’m a desk snacker, cashews, Brazil nuts, a bubbly can of La Croix/San Pellegrino and an apple. 

I’m including all of this here because of the importance of having a comfy, well stocked (in tools & snacks) space to write. That's part one.

The second half is having a clear vision of your project and having the prep work done so that your draft is ready to write. I'm jumping back to my brain dump editorial again.

After I do a brain dump to kind of test and idea, see if it gets the green light (if it does) I move into prep work and a framework outline. I call this having your prep kit done or a novel binder. 

The goal here is to have the basic info (!) of your novel all in one spot making it easy to reference during the drafting process.

Here’s a ss of what this looks like for me in Scrivener. 

This serves as an overview of my entire novel to jump around to as I'm writing. (more on this in a bit) Again i'm focusing on the basic info here - enough that has me ready to write.

Structured Workflow + Being Persistent

Once you’ve got the space and vision you’ve gotta have a plan on how you’re tackling it. In TV writing rooms, specific writers have specific tasks so it’s working like a well-oiled machine. 

For solo writers you’ll need to be building a habit or have a good writing habit down and also working on a schedule (not optional) If you want to have some sort of structure. 

I always say it doesn’t take 3 years to write a novel if you have structure, deadlines and such. I think this is so important when we’re trying to say goodbye to the draft drawer. 

And the easiest way to do this, even if you’re struggling with building a writing habit is to be persistent. It’s almost 2025 and this was on of my biggest takeaways this year. It’s why I’m always pushing around this quote by Octavia Butler:

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

Because persistence is the stepping stone to good habits. So even if you’re stepping in your writing room and only pushing out 100 words, 200, whatever — keep doing that and you’ll build a daily writing habit. Then we can move onto hitting higher markers like 1000 - 3000 words. 

ETA: I’m getting ready to post this editorial Thursday morning and I’m jumping in to add that it’s also beneficial to treat it like a job with a 1-2 hour shift. Even 30 minutes, 15 minutes, again being persistent (showing up) and building that habit. ← This is what I do.

Using Prep Files Intra-Draft

One of my favorite writing room takeaways was learning that before writing sessions writers would review characters arcs, show notes, storyboards and such. Kind of like warming up before the workout. And outlines were finalized before writing began.

For solo writers — we can start our writing sessions by reviewing our (prep work) I mentioned above, this includes the outline or scene breakdowns - whatever you’re working with. Even notes.

My brain dump folder for Scrivener is for initial ideation but also for little ideas I get a long the way, sometimes I’m writing dialogue that pops in my head for a scene that isn’t happening for 3 chapters. 

And if it isn’t 100% clear I am a plotter so I make sure I’m working with a finalized outline and plans before I begin drafting. 

And this works for a few different reasons:

1. You're picking up where you left off with a refresher

2. You're immersing yourself in your story world (I'm reading character cards, setting research - really getting in the zone and do my story justice)

The Feedback Loop

Constructive feedback is invaluable, in the TV writer’s room there may be daily or weekly meetings for refining drafts, or critiques. And scripts go through multiple reviews before their green lit.

For solo writers this is fairly straight forward. We would do self revisions to start and revision checkpoints. You can use (small) feedback circles and to top it off by sending it over to a a professional editor. 

Post-Project Review

Last writing teams like to do evaluations of what worked and what didn’t work to build stronger workflows going forward. So a bit of intentional reflection - learning from your mistakes + wins so the next time around is a better experience. 

For writers we would do this post-draft, post-publish. And be very intentional about this, so beyond mental notes. ← This yields the best results.

So when we scale the collaborative, structured environment of a writer’s room to a solo writer room we can borrow several systems that support our writing and give us good results. I hope I've thrown out some ideas you can take back to your writing room.