How do you keep yourself regular?

Now that title either made you run for the mouse or linger on the page…!

I’m not about to broach a subject that we’d all rather leave to the medical experts, I’m actually talking about writing and it’s rhythm, or the regularity in which you write.

I love writing. I love the way it’s crazy loud in my brain, commenting on every aspect of my life and often all surrounding me…I also love the silence it falls into when even it finds itself mute – but I’m embarrassed to say I don’t like to be regular. Yes, writing is a job and needs practice, but I’m happier to practice from 10pm till 2 in the morning, I’m happy to be woken whenever with an incredible idea or solution to my current writing dilemma, I’m happy for a 4:30am start with my characters in tow…not regular, just don’t let me be that. This may well be due to still living with a small person that finds it quite acceptable to wake me at any given time during the night, cause she’s frightened or thirsty or hangry (yes, that was hangry!), and so throwing out my natural sleeping patterns, and handing me a possible ‘new’ sleeping/writing pattern?

Being regular is theoretically a better way to conduct my ‘writing self’, but try as I may, I find regular writing difficult – I agree, it’s a boring word but remember what I’m doing right now (regular writing!). My writing loses something, it’s spark, it’s romantic qualities, it’s vulnerable edge…I don’t know, it just loses it’s own voice within me.

This is a subject that has been spoken on without limit, and once I finish this post, I will inevitably attempt to stay regular for at least the next week…but sadly it may not stick and you will find me under the covers torch in mouth, drinking my morning coffee in a busy cafe, or finishing off my train of thought in the car as I pick the children up after school, pounding out the next chapter to my never ending stories.

‘Regular’ in my own way.