Writing Habits aka There's Method in My Madness!

Everybody approaches writing on their own terms.

For some people (namely, the prolific writers) writing is approached as any other job, punching in a set number of hours per day, relenting only when their time is up. Others choose to write in small, consistent bursts throughout the day, taking twenty minutes here or half an hour there, all the while balancing their writing against their daily activities. Some of my friends with children and other familial obligations pursue this method.

Myself, I find myself drawn towards immediate, quantifiable goals. More specifically, I set a minimum word count that I must achieve for that day. I generally aim for at least a thousand words, and push it over two thousand if I find myself in the zone. If this isn't to your taste don't fret, there are a variety of ways to mix up this method, such as writing to the end of a set number of scenes, or writing to the end of a chapter.

While it's difficult to say what the right way to write is, (consistently certainly wouldn't hurt) it's much easier to identify what are not effective means of writing. For example, when I was younger I believed that the only way to write was when inspiration struck. I abandoned this notion once I realized that inspiration struck infrequently; I had a great number of stories with a beginning, yet very few finished projects. Waiting for the muse to get me through the daily grind was just not a viable option.

My question for you today is this: what is your method of writing? How do you effectively juggle family, friends, partners, work, and other relationships and get down to business?