Make Writing a Habit

If you’re the type of person who exercises regularly (and really, there’s no excuse not to) then you already know what it takes to stick to a program. Find one that works and keep doing it until it becomes a routine.

The bad news is that it’s a lot easier to find yourself stuck in a routine of something like sitting on your couch and eating Doritos while watching the world go by in the form of terrible sitcoms.

The good news, however, is that it’s really not too difficult to get yourself stuck in a “good” routine. It just takes more discipline early on in the process.

Once exercising becomes part of your daily routine, you’ll find you have no problem scheduling your workouts every day. Eventually it will even get to the point that everything else is forced to schedule around your workouts, instead of the other way around.

And it’s the same thing with anything positive activity you want to add to your daily routine.

So often I’ll hear people complain that they don’t have time to write every day, but try to find time to “fit it in” whenever they can.

That’s a horrible way to look at writing.

Writing, just like exercising, is something that must be done on a regular schedule, preferably every day.

I know we’re all busy and there are not enough hours in the day to do everything we want, but that’s why we need to make every minute count and every writing session as productive as possible.

It’s really not that hard to find a way to schedule in your writing time.

What works for me is to plan ahead. Know exactly what time you’re going to sit down to write, how much time you’re going to have, and go in with a good idea of what exactly you’ll be working on.

I like to set one written goal for each hour I’ll be writing. Sometimes that’s a word-count goal; sometimes it’s a submission or query. It doesn’t really matter what the goal is, just as long as there is some progress.

So plan ahead and use your time wisely. There’s not enough of it to waste.

What about you? What is your writing habit? Leave a comment and let us know!