How to Build a Writing Habit
Practical Advice for the Enterprising Writer
There’s an apocryphal statistic that it takes doing something 21 days in a row to form a new habit. I couldn’t tell you where I first heard this, but like 4 seasons and 12 months, it’s an easy number to remember and sticks in the brain.
Habit building is an important and often studied part of psychology, and there is a multitude of scientific studies around it.1 There’s also a multitude of books about habits, some you’ve probably heard of: Atomic Habits by James Clear (which I own and haven’t read), The Power of Habit by Katherine Curtis, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Sean Covey, and so on. I’m not in a position to judge the efficacy of these books.
I mention this because for the last twenty some odd years of my life, I have been trying to build a sustainable writing practice. Maybe you, too, want to put pen to page and find your way back into the story you set aside. Maybe you’ve thrown up your hands in frustration that nothing you try seems to work.
I can’t promise you anything. I’m not an expert in psychology; only of my own experiences. But what I can promise you is a list of suggestions curated from my own life, the lives of my writer friends and teachers, and countless trial and error. These steps could be applied to other artistic domains, too - though I imagine with some modifications because I’m not really sure that you can just ~do~ woodworking any old place.
Anyways, enough chit chat. Here’s a list of steps on how to build your own writing practice. May they serve you well.
1. Decide where you want to write.
First, decide where you want to write. This might seem like a silly place to start, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Are you someone who can write anywhere - in planes, trains and automobiles? Fantastic. I envy you.
For the rest of us, think about what is your ideal environment. Do you need background noise? Maybe try a cafe or one of those ASMR videos in the background of your study. Do you need complete silence? Try the quiet floor of your local library.
True story: my high school library had a quiet floor, and I spent all of my freshmen year studying there. The lack of noise literally did something to my brain chemistry, and I can no longer work in complete silence. I am currently writing this while listening to ASMR videos in the background.
The point is: find somewhere that will be your dedicated writing area. Why? It should have its own space. Just like you have an office to go to at your job, your writing needs its own home, too.
I am speaking broadly here. Nobody yell at me about their offices or hybrid work situations or work from home lifestyles. My point still stands there, too! When the pandemic started in 2020, I had been working from home for almost 4 years. Many of my friends and family came to me asking how I made it work without losing my mind. My answer? Have a dedicated space in your house to work and then leave when you’re done. Don’t go in over the weekend or on non working hours (as much as you can.) Even if it’s a small table shoved against the wall, having the separate space will help. I even wrote about this for the Financial Diet, too.
By giving your writing its own home, whether its in your home or not, helps train your brain that when you sit down, its writing time.
2. Decide when you want to write.
Ok so you know where you want to write. Now decide when.
Many authors talk about getting up at the crack of dawn to write before work. You could not pay me to do this.2 I’ve been doing morning pages for the past six weeks, and they are just complete drivel. Why? Because you’re supposed to do them right when you wake up, which I more or less do, and my brain is not online yet. How am I supposed to create intricate and exciting worlds when I can barely string two sentences together? No, thank you.
Personally, I tend to write later in the afternoon or evening. It’s just what works for me. Like practicing yoga first thing in the morning, writing first thing in the morning is harder, and I’m stiffer and need more time to warm up. If it’s the evening, I can pretty much jump right in and get going.
You’ll need to figure out what works for you. I’m saying morning and evening here, but maybe you can only write on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-6pm. Sure! I don’t know your life or your responsibilities. My professor Ann Hood tells a story of a friend of hers who wrote her novel only on Saturday mornings and during the summers when she was off from school. (This woman was a teacher.) While I, personally, need a daily routine, you might not! That’s fine. Find your ideal writing time and guard it with your life.
And don’t be afraid to try something weird. Brandon Sanderson, he of Mistborn fame, has a crazy writing routine - 4 hour blocks broke up throughout the day. You can read more about it here. The point is, find a time that works for you and stick to it.
3. Decide how you will write.
This might sound a little silly. How will I write? You ask yourself. With my hands??…
Yes. More specifically, I mean via long hand or computer.
I mix between the two - I journal long hand, but I mainly type my stories on the computer. This is also a disability thing for me: if my wrists ache too much, it is much easier for me to type. Plus, I’m a really fast typist. Thanks Type to Learn!3
Writing by hand is proven to help you retain information. Typing is faster. While I just use these two, there are some authors who use more basic word processing tools like the Alphasmart Neo 2. And by basic I mean - they look like the palm pilots we were all using back in 2002. Carissa Broadbent, she of The Serpent and the Wings of Night fame, (and fellow Rhode Islander!) uses one.
Speaking of tools, I also use Scrivener as a word processor. There’s a plethora of other software tools out there - this site had a list, though I’ll be honest that I’ve never heard of most of these before. I really like Scrivener. One project is essentially a giant Word Doc, and you can save all the component pieces inside. Before, I just had…a hundred different Word Docs floating around in my computer.
I don’t work for Scrivener, but apparently I did a really good job selling it at one of my MFA residencies. One of my professors tried it, and later told me she absolutely hated it. This makes me giggle for so many different reasons; namely that I’m really bad at marketing. Scrivener does have a really long trial period, and a student discount, so you can always try it out if you’re curious.
Like everything else on this list, there will be some level of experimentation needed for you to figure out what tools work for you.
Oh, and apropos of nothing: I only write longhand with Pentel RSVP Black pens. They HAVE to be black, otherwise my synesthesia4 gets activated and I can’t focus. We’re writers, it’s required by law to have a few weird quirks.
4. Decide how often you want to write.
This should really be 2a, but I already made the list and I’m not moving my formatting around so! Decide how often you want to write.
While I haven’t actually read Atomic Habits, I have adopted one of James Clear’s other methodologies: never fail twice. We can quibble around the wording of ‘fail,’ but the idea is: as you’re building a habit, you’re going to fail. When you do, just start again. I use this in my writing as: if I don’t write one day, I have to write the next day. This works for me, and is primarily because in past depressive episodes, I would go weeks without writing. I’m not sure that would happen now, but this strategy does allow me to take days off as well as making sure I’m committed to my practice.
A corollary to this that may help you decide how often you want to write: word count. Maybe you’ve got a daily or weekly word count you want to hit. Many authors use this, so if you want to write, say 1,000 a words a week, you could break that up into 500 or 250 word chunks. Or even 100 word chunks.
5. Sit down and write.
This is affectionately what my professor Charles Coe calls ‘ass-in-chair-time.’ Because sadly, to get the writing done, you do need to sit down and write.
I know. It’s very rude.
6. Combine Steps 1-5 and Execute.
Now that you’ve got a plan, it’s time to execute it! What I do find helpful about that debunked-21-day-habit-thing is that time is the emphasis. Whenever we try something new, it’s going to take time. Time to see whether it’s working, time to see whether it’s not. So even if your new routine feels awkward at first, give it a go, and see how it feels. You’ll end up at step 7 sooner or later anyways. Which is…
7. Fix what’s not working.
As you start writing, following the routine you’ve established in the previous steps, you’ll start to see what works for you and what doesn’t. I did try morning writing once upon a time, and it ultimately wasn’t for me. However, those stints I did of waking up at 6am (gag) and typing for an hour straight has given me a lot of material to mine for my novel draft. While it ultimately wasn’t what worked for me, it did help me in the end.
Change is a constant in our lives, whether we want it to be true or not. You have to be willing to adapt. When in lived in Boston, I’d get up at 8am on Saturday mornings and book it over to Kendall Square, laptop and manuscript in tow. Why? Because I wanted a seat at Vester, my favorite cafe.
Below, a Vester morning of bygone days.
For anyone who doesn’t know Boston (or Cambridge, more specifically here) Kendall Square is where all the tech companies are. It’s very close to MIT, and Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and a whole smorgasbord of biotech companies are clustered in the nearby environs. Meaning: it’s a mess during the week and no one is there on the weekends. Further meaning: no one was in this cafe, so I did not have to fight for a seat and I could sit and type to my heart’s content.
I had a routine. I had it down perfectly - I’d eat breakfast and lunch, stay for about 4 hours (9am-1pm) then wander back home.
Then the pandemic happened. My ideal writing environment was no longer possible. So what did I have to do? Adapt. Did I complain about it? Absolutely. But I had no other choice. I tried morning writing. I tried getting a small desk and shoving it against a wall. I ended up moving to Rhode Island and had to begin the whole process all over again because I was in a new environment. The point is, as you settle into your new routine, you’ll figure out if your cadence/time/place needs updating.
8. Practice makes Perfect
If you’re looking for inspiration, almost all professional writers are asked some form of this question during interviews or book tours: “What’s your writing routine?” Read what they say, and try them out for yourself. Stephen King details his in his memoir-as-craft-book On Writing.
An Australian YouTuber I follow, Christy Anne Jones, has a series on her channel where she tries the writing routines of famous authors. I’ve talked about her videos before, in case you want to see what one of these routines looks like before trying it yourself. So you can not only see what famous writers do, but also hear about it in a nice Australian accent.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have had to adjust my routine. Yes, yes, I said the whole be adaptable thing, but I HATE IT SO MUCH. I just want one routine that I can follow for the rest of my life that I never have to change the end.
Sadly, that’s not how brains work, that’s not how creativity works, and that’s not how life works, either.
And yes - practice makes perfect, but another aphorism I’ve adopted lately is: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You only hit your writing goal 3 out of 5 days that week? You still got 3 days of writing done. You didn’t have time to write so you typed a note on your phone? You still wrote something. You were too tired to write so you read a book instead? You still did something creative and in service of your writing. Because as we know, everything is writing.
I hope this helps you find your way into a writing practice. Because the world needs you, and your words. And now, onto this week’s chaos.
Mug Moment of the Week
An actual Tufts mug this week! This one I also got during my undergraduate years, and it has also been around the block, much like last week’s. However, this one has fared much better, probably because the Tufts and Jumbo monogram have been engraved into the mug and not screen printed.
By the way, this is my current ideal writing environment. Clear and clean table top surface, additional lighting in the form of portable lamp and candle,5 tea, and paper to help me put edits down for my novel. And why yes, that is also the Author Clock.
No New Books™️ Challenge
I am holding strong since starting over. I’m gunning for that 50 day mark. Yes, I am nowhere near that, but I am determined. I don’t need to buy myself books as presents for my upcoming birthday, I can buy myself ~other~ things.
Streak to Beat: 50 days (January 1st - February 19th)
Last streak: 12 days (June 28th - July 8th)
Current streak: 8 days (August 20th - Present)
What I’m listening to
A surprise entry because I have literally been listening to this song non-stop since last Friday.
Oh and also! I was featured by LitArtsRI as their member spotlight for the week of August 15h. Way to bury the lede…It’s over on Instagram here if you’d like to go read.
Many of them now saying that 21 day figure is a myth.
That’s probably a lie. Name a sum high enough and I’ll consider.
I am not exaggerating when I saying typing might be the most useful skill I learned in my education. Definitely elementary education, probably secondary education, too. Just don’t tell my French skills that.
I have grapheme —> color synesthesia, and it took me until I was 16 to realize that not everyone thought in color.
Overhead lighting is the devil.
loving these tips! building a writing habit can be so hard but is so essential — the times of year that I’m in the habit of writing consistently makes me feel so much better