When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing you do?
For me, it’s opening my blinds and looking out to see what kind of day it will be. Then I go and eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast and my day has begun.
If you’re like most people I know, you probably have a system for things you do without thinking about it every day. You automatically brush your teeth after your shower. You automatically make up your bed. You automatically hang up the dishtowel after drying dishes.
Of course you know what I’m talking about. These actions are called habits, training yourself to do a task repeatedly without having to remember it every day.
It’s important to develop habits for writing as well as regular life. For the rest of this blog post, I’ll be telling you about the habits that have helped me with writing, as well as other “hacks” and tricks I take advantage of to make the most of writing and get as much time to do it as possible.
I’m a college student. Going to classes, doing homework, engaging in social interaction, and any part-time jobs take up a lot of time, believe me. But taking my first year in college off from writing helped me see how much time I really had to write, if I had wanted to. (Note: I decided before my first year of college to not write every day while at school. I wanted to develop good—guess it—habits for college-level homework and time management. It worked.)
Every day even with classes and my busy schedule I realized that there were times during the day when I could have been writing my books or at least thinking about them.
First off, I’m going to assume that you’re a busy person like me. If you are younger, perhaps a teen who has decided to write a book, then count yourself lucky. Younger people usually have much more time to do what they want than adults do. Take advantage of that time while you can.
Anyway, back to the older person busy schedule. You more than likely have a full time job. That’s many hours of your day spent at work. There is compromising that time. Of course you need to keep up with your job.
But it’s the time after that I’m going to talk to you about. I found that at college there was usually a space of at least an hour when I could do what I wanted every day. You need to think about your schedule. Identify what activities you do every day. Is there any amount of time in there which you could be using to write your book? Perhaps you crash on the couch for a while listening to music after work. Could you work on writing during that time? What about the lull right after supper? The time before bed?
Everyone has a busy schedule, but more often than not you have something you can trade to write.
Being able to write every day is vital. Developing this habit separates the writers from the slackers. You need to learn how to become consistent. The weeks when I made the most progress on my works was when I had time every day to write, time I could count on.
Ultimately, developing a daily habit to write for a while is not something I can tell you how to do. You are the one who knows your schedule. You know what is important to you. Maybe there really is no time for you to write every day. Don’t worry. Priorities in real life are more important than writing a book. Don’t compromise your job, relationships, school or anything you are responsible for just to write.
Writing is something you must commit to. It’s best achieved when you are disciplined. Maybe you don’t learn habits very well. It might be time for you to learn.
To start off, I would suggest setting a word count goal every day or a time slot every day. I try to write at least 1,500 words every day. If I have more time to write, I will keep going. It can take me a little while to warm up, and setting a limit that I make myself meet can help force your writing to warm up so the words can flow.
Don’t go big at first. Sometimes half an hour, a few hundred words is the best way to go. Don’t burn yourself out over it. The key is to find the right balance between your time, your word count, and your ability to write at a certain speed.
I usually write at around 34 words per minute, so at that speed I can write roughly 2,000 words in an hour. I can actually type faster, but I have to think about what I write, and 34 is the most I can do to be able to write quality. Discover your balance and as the habit starts to fall into place you will learn to write your goal every day.
Something that really affirmed the idea of habits being vital was NaNoWriMo.
You might have heard it. Nanowrimo is the National Novel Writing Month. It’s an even that takes place in November where writers all around the world set a goal of writing at least 50,000 words in a month. I did it in 2018 and plan to do it again this year. I highly recommend doing it if you find yourself having issues with being consistent.
There are other pockets of time that can be awesome for writing. One hack I love is writing on car trips. Occasionally my family will travel out of state for a concert or to visit relatives, and as long as you aren’t driving, the time can be great for making progress. I finished my fourth book in a car. Having hours and hours to simply write is perfect for getting a good focused session in. I think of it as taking an intensives class: jamming hard work into hours in an intense day. These car trips unfortunately happen infrequently, but I highly recommend writing during such opportunities you have. It might be during your metro ride to work, an hour in the school bus, or anything like that where you are able to work uninterrupted.
Weekends are also a great way to get some solid work done on a book. I have written thousands and thousands of words on Saturdays over the past few years, and even one free day a month can work wonders. If you have an exceptionally busy weekday schedule, the weekend may be the only available time you have at all.
So to sum up: set a goal every single day to write a certain amount. No slacking! Breaking the habit could give you writer’s block. Take advantage of the chunks of time that come your way.
Habits and using my time wisely are the ways I have become the disciplined writer I am. Please, believe me when I say that consistent writing is necessary to produce much writing at all. You won’t regret it.
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