Ah, the daily writing habit. The thorn-in-the-side for many writers.
You want to write. You love to write. You enjoy writing. You have things to say.
But you just can’t seem to sit down every day and put words on the page…
Note: This is a guest post by Jennifer Blanchard, she is a best selling author, an award-winning blogger, and the founder of Dream Life Or Bust, a movement created to inspire, motivate, educate and empower multi-passionate writers, artists and entrepreneurs to build a dream life and business around all of their passions and interests, so they can have the freedom to live on their terms and never have to choose just one thing. Grab her free audio training + workbook, “Multi-Passionate Productivity: How To Do Everything You Dream Of and Pull It All Off, here.
I’m not really one for debating about or defending where you are or how you got there. None of that really matters.
What does matter, is where you want to go from here.
If you want to build a daily writing habit and you’re ready to commit to it and stick with it, I’ve got 9 tips to help you make it happen:
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Make Space
Let’s cut right to it–we’re all adults here–you don’t have a habit of writing because up ’til now you haven’t been making space for it in your day. Period. End of story. No point in sugar-coating it.
The question now is, are you ready to be disciplined enough to do what matters?
If you want to create a habit of writing daily, you must make space for writing in your day, every single day. This means you must:
- Remove things that are less important—time is your most precious resource. So you have to weigh your options and decide what you’re going to cut way back on that’s less important than getting your writing done.
- Put boundaries around things you still want to do, but need to control better—this includes things like streaming on Netflix, watching endless videos on YouTube, checking Facebook and email, etc.
- Stop doing things altogether— there may be some things you need to give up or let go of, at least temporarily, so you can make space for your writing; only you can determine what’s no longer important enough
If you don’t make space in your day you can forget about building a writing habit because it’s not gonna happen.
Take Action Now: Go through each bullet point above and list out what you will remove, put boundaries around and stop doing altogether. It helps to write it out and get a clear picture of exactly where your time goes each day.
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Recommit Daily
A wise married person once said you have to choose the person you’re marrying every day for the rest of your life. You have to wake up in the morning and decide that you are going to be with them and then act accordingly. Every. Single. Day.
Commitment is an in-the-moment kind of thing, so what works with marriage can also work with your writing.
Every day, you must recommit to doing your writing. This is an agreement you have to make with yourself and something you must keep your word on.
This takes practice, so don’t give yourself a hard time if you fall off track. Just get back to it as soon as you catch yourself.
When I wake up in the morning, there are a million distractions pulling me in multiple directions. But after I take the dog out for a walk, I sit down and I do my writing.
I could easily choose to do many other things, which is why I recommit to my writing every morning. I intentionally make the choice to write and to let that be the most important thing I do all day.
Take Action Now: Write out a short commitment statement for what you’re now committed to going forward. Program it into your phone as a daily calendar alert, write it on a Post-it that you see frequently, whatever works for you, but get that statement in front of yourself every day. Say it out loud every day and take a moment to recommit to your writing being a priority, and then go sit down and write.
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Find Your Deeper Motivation
There always has to be a motivation for why you want to write and why you want to make it a habit you actually stick with. What’s yours?
Nine weeks ago I started building a habit of exercising 5-6 days a week. After a couple of weeks, the resistance got strong.
What pulled me through was a deeper motivation I discovered: when I exercise I get tons of ideas for my writing. That kind of creative flow is worth the effort to get to the gym and move.
Take Action Now: Grab a notebook and spend 5-10 minutes freestyle writing on this question: what motivates you to write? Don’t think, just write. See what comes up. Finding your deeper motivation may take some time, so I recommend journaling on this question often.
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Doing Your Soul Work Makes Your Life Work
Something I discovered early on when I was building my daily writing habit was that on the days I actually did my writing, I was happier, more in flow and things just went smoothly all day.
But on the days when I didn’t write, I spent the day feeling annoyed and even angry. I found myself resenting all the other things I had to do in my day.
Maybe you can relate?
The reason this happens is because you’re not feeding your soul with what it needs: writing time. Writing is soul work for many of us, and so when you don’t make writing a priority, you create chaos in your life and drama in your relationships.
If you take care of what matters, the rest falls into place.
Take Action Now: stop what you’re doing right now and go write for at least 15 minutes. Do your soul work and do it as soon as you can every day.
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Use “The Equation”
We’re often told that in order to be something, we need to first have something and then do something with the thing we have. But the truth is, that equation is wrong.
In order to have something, you must first be something and then do the actions required to have the something.
Example: most writers think that to be a pro author, they first must have a daily writing habit and then that daily habit will allow them to do the work of writing a book that’s worth publishing, and then they will be a pro author. This is a backwards way of thinking that is actually stopping you from creating the habit in the first place.
Here’s how it should go: first you start by embodying who a pro writer is, which includes the mindset and habits that this person would have. By making the choice to be this person now, you then begin to act from that place and start to do the work required to write and publish your book. That’s when you’ll have the writing success you desire.
Creating a writing habit feels hard because you’re putting the end goal–becoming a pro writer–out into the future. It’s not here, it’s not happening now. That’s not very motivating.
But when you start by embodying who a pro writer is, you get to be that person now, instead of in the future. And then you just act accordingly, which includes having a daily writing habit.
Take Action Now: Grab your notebook, set a timer for 5-10 minutes and do freestyle writing around who you would be if you were already the successful author you dream of being right now? What would your life look like? What would it feel like?
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Write Your Own Rules
One of the biggest reasons writers don’t stick with a daily writing habit is because they’re being too rigid about what that habit needs to be.
Someone in the writing world said you should write 10 pages a day. Then someone else said you should write at least 500 words. Then someone else said you should write two chapters a day. And then someone else said… I think you get my point.
You have to stop trying to build a habit of writing around what matters to other people and start with what matters to you.
What do you want to accomplish each day? What would make you feel like you had a habit of writing? Five-hundred words? A thousand? Writing for a minimum of 15 minutes a day?
You get to choose.
And by choosing something that feels good to you, you’re much more likely to stick with it. Giving yourself rigid rules or living by another writers’ standards will just be a reason for you to quit.
Take Action Now: Grab that notebook again and answer the question: what does building a daily writing habit look like for me? Write your new rules and then commit to them for at least the next 30 days. Tweak at that point if you need to.
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Be More Gradual
When you’ve spent weeks, months or even years not writing every day, you have a momentum going in the opposite direction of where you really want to be. That momentum is strong and it’s fast.
You need to start slow and build up speed in the other direction (aka: you writing every day) if your daily writing habit is ever going to stick.
Give yourself a goal of writing 3-5 times this week for at least 15 minutes. Then when you do it consistently for a few weeks, start writing every other day. Move to daily when you’re ready.
Gradual increases allow you to achieve your goal faster, which motivates you to go to the next level. You’re also gradually building momentum in the direction you want to go.
Momentum is easier to sustain when it’s not working against you.
Take Action Now: Grab your notebook and make a plan for how you will get started and gradually increase. Focus on what you know you can consistently maintain. Don’t make big leaps until you’ve been consistent.
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Create a Personal Challenge
This is one of my absolute favorite ways to build a daily writing habit (or any habit, for that matter). Create a personal challenge around it.
Choose a timeframe (ex: 30 days). Choose your goal (write for 15 minutes daily). Choose your reward/celebration (dinner at your favorite restaurant and you can order anything you want).
Commit to this challenge publicly (Facebook is a good place for this). Document your challenge as you go, sharing your ups, downs and everything in between.
Not only will you build your habit, but you’ll inspire others along the way.
Take Action Now: Create a personal challenge for yourself around building your daily writing habit. Choose a timeframe, goal and reward; announce it and get writing. You’ve got this!
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Let the Past Go
Everything you’ve done or not done up to this point no longer matters. Let it all go.
That means any previous attempts, any stories you’re still telling yourself about why you didn’t write daily in the past, any excuses you used to use, whatever happened, release it. Let it go.
Give yourself permission to start fresh and to tell a new story about yourself as a writer going forward.
Most importantly, forgive yourself for not showing up for your writing all this time. Continuing to feel guilty or berating yourself won’t make you any more motivated.
Take Action Now: Grab your notebook and make a list of all the previous attempts you’ve made (or as many as you can remember) to create a writing habit, any excuses you’ve used for not writing, write it all down. Then crumble up the list and either tear it to shreds or burn it (safely!). The past is now done and today is a new day for your writing life.
Bonus Tip: Don’t Give Up, Even When You Fall Off Track
Most people think creating a habit means you just decide to do it and then you do it and stick with it; the end. Maybe in a perfect world, but this is the real world, and in the real world, distractions happen, we break our word to ourselves and life chaos stops us.
The important thing is no matter how many times you fall off track, you get right back on as fast as you can and keep going.
When I was building my 5-6 times a week gym habit (which I’ve now sustained for 9 weeks consistently), I started and stopped and started again four times before it finally stuck. The thing that made the difference as compared to previous years (when I attempted, failed and gave up) was I gave myself permission to not be perfect. I gave myself permission to modify exercises, ease in gradually and not give myself a hard time about moments when I get off track.
We often expect way too much of ourselves in the early days and that’s what causes us to not stick with it.
The important thing isn’t that you’re perfect or even that you create the habit the first time (or the fiftieth). It’s just that you keep on trying until it finally does stick.
Consistency matters more than anything else in achieving a result.
Remember, change doesn’t happen overnight, and you may not see the results right away. So what really matters is whether you’ll choose to keep going anyhow.
No matter how many tips you have for building a daily writing habit, it’s all going to come down to you and the choice you make every day to show up as the pro writer you want to be. When you constantly and consistently act from that place, your goal of creating a daily writing habit is a done deal.
What are your tips for building a daily writing habit? Share in the comments.
