Most successful writers have one thing in common: a writing habit. Successful writers don’t just sit down and write when the inspiration strikes. They don’t just write when there’s nothing else to do, when they have no social engagements to attend and no other work to complete. They write regularly, with intention. They treat their writing as a routine, one that can’t easily be dismissed when life gets in the way.
Read the six-part series, How to Start Writing Your Novel.
Here are 5 steps you can take to establish a productive writing habit:
Set aside a writing space.
Whether it’s a desk in your closet, a dedicated home office, or your bed (that’s where I do my writing), you need to have a space where you regularly go to write.
Make your space orderly, calm, and well-lit. If you can fashion some sort of view by putting your writing space beside a window, even better. And make it comfortable! It’s easier to stick to your writing habit if your space is a place you want to be.
Set aside a writing time to maintain your writing habit.
Choose which days of the week you’re going to write, at what time, and for how long. Put them on the calendar. It’s not a habit, really, until it’s on the calendar. When it’s on the calendar, don’t ditch it for something else–phone calls, social media, lunch, even for a walk. Your writing time is your writing time.
To start a writing habit, you must honor your writing schedule.
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Get your digital and analog tools in order.
- Organizing your writing: You can use the excellent, feature-rich app Scrivener to organize your notes, research, scenes, chapters, and stories, and to keep track of your daily word count.
- Keep up with your notes: An easy-to-access notebook is also important. It’s simple, analog, and it works. I keep one Moleskine notebook on my desk, one by my bed, and one in my purse. The hardcovers make it easy to write anyway, and the smooth pages just somehow make me want to write, which is more than half the battle.
- Outline your novel: If you like outlining, Plottr is a visually appealing and streamlined way to plan your book. It’s inexpensive and highly effective, with templates for different plot structures.
- Coffee: For me, there is no writing without coffee. (After all, my newsletter is called The Caffeinated Writer). Maybe tea is more your style. But I start each morning with coffee, and I have coffee again in the afternoon. It helps kick my writing brain into gear. (Get my favorite kettle, the Corsari Gooseneck Kettle, here.)
Invest in Your Writing
Whether it’s a writing retreat, an online creative writing class, a great novel writing workbook, a beautiful lamp, or a cool gadget, make some investment that inspires you to follow through. We tend to take something more seriously once we’ve invested in it.
An investment you can be reminded of every day, like a desk, a course delivered to your email, or a writing group that keeps you on track, will go a long way in helping you develop and maintain your writing habit.
Set progressive goals to grow your writing habit.
Your writing habit will be more meaningful if you set goals. Set a goal for the year, and then break that down into goals for each month, a goal for each week, and a goal for each day. Your goals will grow with you.
If your goal for the year is to write your novel, you can commit to write 10,000 words per month, which is about 2,500 words per week. (In my annual course Novel in 9, students write a novel in nine months.)
If you goal is to publish your first short story, put a date on the calendar for submitting the story to literary journals. Then commit to working on the story for three hours per week until it is completed and revised.
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