Published November 2, 2016.
Updated June 4, 2020.
These days, National Novel Writing Month isn’t the only writing or writing-related challenge out there. From Instagram’s #authormonthchallenges, in which each day has a different prompt to post to your feed, to Suleika Jaouad’s admittedly thought-provoking Isolation Journals, there are many ways that writers—the published, unpublished, and those who’ve “always wanted to write a book”—can get started.
These challenges are no easy feat. (Therein lies the meaning of the word. Duh.) Writing a novel in a month, as one does during NaNoWriMo, requires concentrated amounts of hard work and dedication, which I admire.
What I don’t admire is that—much like a fad diet—once the cocktail party novelty of a challenge ends, everyone’s writing practice tends to go out the window.
So, how do you keep the effort going when you don’t have the extrinsic motivation of a daily email or a monthlong challenge. My secret? Slow and steady wins the race.
In this post, I offer up 4 tips to creating your own disciplined, sustainable writing.
1. Examine your weekly schedule. Are there regular pockets of time in which you can write?
Knowing what time of day works best for your writing practice is a great start, and poring over your weekly schedule for patterns can also be beneficial. For instance, after years of trying to make time in the evenings to write, I finally realized that by giving up an hour of TV and an hour of scrolling through social media each night and by waking up a couple of hours early, I can have the productive writing practice I’ve been dreaming about my entire adult life.
I wake up at six forty-five and eat breakfast while leveling up to consciousness. Then, after journaling and a seven-minute meditation, I have at least thirty to forty-five minutes left to work on my own writing before the day gets started.
2. Decide how you’ll monitor your progress: by minimum word count or minimum amount of time spent writing.
The answer may change depending on your circumstances. When I’m generating a first draft or participating in an event like NaNoWriMo, I like to shoot for a minimum of 2,000 words written each time I sit down. They don’t have to be good words, but they need to exist on the page.
If I’m self-editing, though, it makes more sense to track my writing progress by time increments (e.g., a minimum of 30 minutes per session) rather than by word count.
3. DON’T go more than two days without writing…
In Tip #1, I mentioned that I wake up early to write before the day gets started. Of course, sometimes my schedule is hectic. Sometimes, a crowded list of editing projects or even a fun night out means I’m sleep-deprived.
I know it’s tough, and I’m not getting any younger. If the choice is between losing sleep and losing writing time, I will opt to start my day well-rested. However, I do my best never to go more than two days in a row without writing.
Going more than two days without writing risks the downside of Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest will continue at rest—unless acted upon by an unbalanced outside force.
Go more than two days without writing, and the outside force you’ll need to stop hitting snooze and get going again is a hell of a lot of willpower (and probably an IV of caffeine). So, learn to say no and pencil writing time into your planner every two days at the most. Otherwise, once you do get in front of a word processor, you’ll spend a lot of your highly coveted time staring at a blinking cursor on an empty page.
4. …but DON’T forget to be flexible!
Life changes, you change, and for better or worse, so does your writing practice. What worked for you three years ago may not work today.
I’m a living example of this. As I updated this article in June 2020, three years and some change after November 2016, I had to spend a lot of time revising from a writing practice that took place largely once a week and in the evenings to my much more even-keel morning pages.
The life of the writer is not simply putting fingers to keys or pen to paper. Rebecca Solnit has an essay, “How to be a Writer,” on LitHub that I absolutely adore. I find myself coming back to the following line, time and again:
“Remember that writing is not typing.”
Some days, you’ll write like a maniac, and others, the road will be blocked before you. There is no magic formula to conjure one scenario and avoid the other. Be kind to yourself. Be forgiving. But most of all, live your life, take a breath when and where it’s needed, and then, write with all you’ve got.