by Jenna | Apr 16, 2015 | Writing Articles
When someone joins my writing community, and doesn’t participate, I am always fascinated to know why. I don’t assume that the person is lazy or just not writing. And sometimes there are real reasons, like a sudden death in the family or an unexpected deadline at work.
But more often than not, when someone isn’t writing, it’s resistance. Resistance means avoiding the very thing you know you most want to do. In fact, the bigger the calling, the more resistance.
And if you’re the one in resistance, it can be tricky to spot. The stories we tell ourselves become so familiar, we take them as givens.
Garden variety resistance
Stories like “being too busy”, for instance, are common. It’s our best socially acceptable excuse, after all! These are the more obvious cases, where the writer says they want to write, but fails to do so, saying they are too busy.
It’s resistance, plain and simple.
Sure. It might ALSO be true that they are too busy. But WHY are they too busy? What self-created realities are they living in that make them too busy to write?
Resistance leads us to create overflowing lives with impossible tasks and deadlines, because if we CAN’T write, we don’t have to write. Saved!
We always have a choice
The thing is, though, we make the choices that create our lives.
Sure, we might have to hold down day jobs. But we don’t have to be perfectionists about Every Single Bit of work that we do, or work Every Single Available Hour to successfully accomplish our jobs. Perfectionism keeps us working on other projects far longer than necessary. Being busy in this way is the ultimate form of procrastination.
The reality is that it is almost always possible to write for just a few minutes a day, no matter how busy you are. Usually if you can’t find a few minutes, it’s because you’re allowing perfectionism and resistance to get in the way, one way or the other. Even taking on too much work is a form of perfectionism, because when we can’t write, we don’t have to, and we don’t have to see ourselves fail to reach our own impossibly high standards.
Insidious types of resistance
The more insidious types of resistance are new projects that suddenly demand our attention, like just when we’ve finally committed to writing a novel, we decide we have to start a thirty-day workout program, get another degree, start a new business, clear our clutter, move, or fix our finances.
Why do we do this?
On the surface, it might look like we’re mastering self-improvement in all areas of our lives, all at once. It feels so good to finally be committing to writing that we overcommit to trying to improve everything in our lives. Or it might look like we’ve gotten clear that these other projects are more important to do first.
It looks noble. Or smart, to get your priorities in order.
But underneath, it’s self-sabotage.
What we’re really doing is simply avoiding the writing. We might not be willing or able to admit it to ourselves at the time, but raw naked terror is running the show. Better to build one habit or make one major change at a time, ideally in small manageable pieces.
There’s nothing like signing up for something like the writing community or committing to doing the work, and then seeing yourself run fleeing in the other direction (or just plain old losing interest) to clue you in to the fact that you are secretly TERRIFIED of facing the page.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being scared.
In fact, it’s ENTIRELY normal. If you aren’t scared, you might even be doing it wrong.
You might be surprised about what I really think when you aren’t writing
But here’s the thing. If you tell me you want to write and the instantly do the opposite, you might be surprised (or not, if you know me at all!) to know that I DON’T think:
- He’s being lazy.
- She isn’t serious about being a writer.
- He doesn’t have what it takes.
Far from it.
In fact, what goes through my brain is:
- Oh, poor thing, she must be terrified.
- I wonder if he knows he’s running away.
- I hope she will reach out for help instead of hiding.
- I wonder if he knows how defended he is right now.
- I wonder what she’s doing instead of writing and how I can help her troubleshoot it.
What I really see hidden in the way writers act out after they’ve committed to writing but don't do it – is a cry for help.
The bigger the badder
And the larger the way the resistance plays out, the more terror I see:
- Taking on new responsibilities at work or for the kids' schools? Scared.
- Going out drinking every night instead of writing? Panicky.
- Suddenly deciding to start a new business venture or get a fine arts degree? Petrified.
All these kinds of choices – whether they are sudden new choices or chronic patterns – they are resistance, and show us how scared we truly are.
Is this grounds for self-flagellation?
No.
Far from it.
It’s powerful information.
When you know you are not lazy or weak willed but scared, then you know how to deal with it.
The antidote for fear
The antidote for fear is courage.
But it’s also about having a super simple plan to bypass the fear and get into action with the smallest possible steps to get you writing.
So when I see you not writing, my first response is compassion, followed by tons of support and brainstorming to help you get going again. It’s as simple as that.
by Jenna | Dec 18, 2014 | Writing Articles
I was raised in a family where there's a right way and a wrong way, and great woe to the one who chose the wrong way. It was my early training program in perfectionism.
I learned to figure out what the right way was, and always do that. It was safer that way. And easier.
But it wasn't very creative. And it certainly didn't foster much in the way of independent thinking.
Over the years I've gotten better and better about doing things -- including writing -- even when I can do them far less than perfectly. I've learned to be willing to make mistakes, to try things, to "ship" before I'm ready, to create tons of accountability for myself so I can push through where I used to get stuck in the past, and to live more on my own creative edge.
So imagine my surprise in discovering that my own perfectionism was alive and well -- raging even -- this year.
It's an evil thing, perfectionism. So sweet at times. We'll talk about "a perfect day" with a sigh -- and we mean it, it was lovely and delicious and wonderful, everything felt just right. But how do we go from that to the paralyzed inaction of perfectionism when we can't figure out the exact right thing to write?
The insidious nature of perfectionism
For the record, perfectionism is defined as a “refusal to accept any standard short of perfection.” It means having such impossibly high standards that nothing can ever measure up.
Ever.
Including ourselves.
And it mucks up many aspects of our lives, including our relationships, finances, parenting, self-care, health habits, and especially our creativity. It rips holes in our self-esteem and our productivity if we let it.
Let's talk about how perfectionism works in a creative process:
- Perfectionism triggers procrastination. If we don't know the answer in a creative project, we often stop and wait until we can figure it out (or bang our heads against the wall trying to solve it before proceeding). If it doesn't feel right it must therefore be wrong, but what could the right answer be? This can trigger a kind of obsessive procrastination that sometimes looks productive, but isn't -- researching, discussing, debating, thinking about -- instead of writing.
- Perfectionism feels safer. If I can't get it done perfectly, then I won't do it at all. It's a very black and white, fixed mindset that doesn't allow for learning, growth, or much creativity. (Creativity is MESSY!)
- Perfectionism leads to paralysis. If we procrastinate long enough, waiting for the right answers, we can stumble into a lasting paralysis. I don't know what to do, I can't do anything. I'm blocked! I can't figure out which way to go. I better stay right here.
- Perfectionism keeps us from getting feedback. Perfectionists are often extremely reluctant to share our work with anyone or ask for feedback on it. We are terrified of finding out it's not good enough, not done yet, and will require more work. More work that we can hardly bear to do because it's so painstaking. What if they hate my writing? What if I'm not as good as I should be and they can tell? What if they find out that I am an impostor? Ironically, perfectionists often reject the feedback they receive as well, usually as "not good enough".
- Perfectionism keeps us from finishing. There's nothing like not finishing to guarantee that no one will notice that the work is less than perfect. It's much, much "safer" not to finish. It's not living up to what I imagined it would be. It just feels wrong. I'm stuck. I can't finish. I'll never finish. There's no point. But not finishing creates self-doubt and its own kind of paralysis: I must not love writing enough. I'm not a real writer.
- Perfectionism is an escape hatch. This is a tricky one that Corey Mandell talks about. We sometimes use perfectionism to let us off the hook. We create situations where we "don't have enough time" to get it done perfectly so we phone it in, require less of ourselves, or rush to do it all at the last minute. So when we turn in less-than-our-best work, we have an excuse for why we couldn't live up to our own impossibly high standards.
Three antidotes for perfectionism
I've recently experienced a perfect storm of three different antidotes for perfectionism that came together in a powerful way.
Antidote #1: Think of perfectionism as just one of many ways to write
One of my mentors, Hal Croasmun of ScreenwritingU, has been talking about perfectionism in the Master Screenwriting Certificate program I'm taking. I've been hearing him talk about it for months, but honestly? I kept telling myself that I knew better than to fall for my own perfectionism and that I wasn't falling for it, because I was still writing.
But I was also writing more slowly than I wanted to be writing, and I was finding that I was struggling to "figure out" a lot of my story. The answers weren't coming easily, and I kept finding myself in rabbit hole after rabbit hole of confusion and overthinking.
When Hal described perfectionism as "just one of many processes" we can use as writers, I started seeing it in a new way.
He says we have many methods to choose from when we write, and perfectionism is an excellent tool for our final, polished draft. But it is not a good tool for getting our first drafts written.
He got me thinking about how I was going about my writing process: I was going along, completing the assignments he had given us, and any time I hit a place I was confused, I would stop, and try to figure it out. Sounds pretty normal, right? But what I wasn't noticing were all the arguments I was having with myself while I was doing that, like:
- You have to get this right or people will think you don't know what you're doing.
- You should have gotten a science degree if you were serious about writing sci-fi.
- It won't be real sci-fi, it'll just be a crummy space opera. (For the record I love space operas.)
- You need to do a ton more research.
- You've got to know exactly how this world works or it'll never make sense and the whole script will fall apart.
But after listening to Hal on the subject of perfectionism, I realized that what I was doing was trying to protect myself from failure and rejection by trying to get it done perfectly. But by doing so, I was also stopping myself from moving ahead and was falling further and further behind in class, which is not in alignment with what I actually want.
And something fell into place for me. Finally landed.
Hal has been telling us from the start of the program to give ourselves permission to write crap (I tell people this too, for goodness sakes!) and that if we don't know the answer to something, to either leave it blank or put down a guess and just move on. I made a vow to myself to do exactly that. To work with my outline and my writing process in a more experimental, exploratory way -- a different way to write -- while I'm working through this first draft.
Antidote #2: "Anything other than writing must come after writing."
Around the same time I was listening to Hal, I was also reading Chuck Wendig's latest ebook, 30 Days In the Word Mines, and stumbled onto this little gem about productivity.
"It’s very easy to do a lot of things and feel productive but, at the end, not be productive. This includes:
- editing as you go
- research
- world building
- networking/social media
- marketing (before the book is done)
- talking about writing
- reading about writing
That’s not to say these are universally unproductive or unnecessary -- but really, when you’re working on a first draft, your best and strongest foot forward is: Write. Nothing else. Produce words. Jam words into sentences. Cram sentences into paragraphs. Paragraphs into chapters. Chapters into stories. Anything other than writing must come after writing."
What if my "solutions" for my perfectionism-driven fears were manifesting as these kinds of sidetracks? What if instead I just focused on getting it down, rather than figuring it out, as Julia Cameron says?
I made another vow. No more editing. No more researching. No more looking up words in the dictionary.
Just doing the writing.
Antidote #3: You're not allowed to hate it until it's done.
I also found myself having an illuminating inner conversation last Monday morning.
After my first two vows, I'd been happily outlining on Sunday night, moving along, Getting It Done.
But then when I woke up on the next day, I found myself thinking, "I hate this script."
(I believe it is highly significant that I was having these thoughts while not working on the project. I find that I get into more trouble with my work when I'm not working on it than when I'm actually putting pen to page or fingers to keyboard.)
My negative thought-stream went on for a few minutes but then I caught myself, realizing that it was NOT helping me.
So instead I decided, "I am not allowed to hate this script until it is finished. Then I can decide what I think of it. And only then."
After all, even the Pixar folks know you don't really know what you have until something is finished... and then you rewrite!
What if it's TRULY okay not to know the answers?
When this all connected, I realized that I could drastically pick up the pace of my writing if I really, truly, honestly just gave myself permission to NOT KNOW THE ANSWERS. To go with my best ideas, trust myself that I would fix it later if it didn't work, and to move on.
I found myself blazing through my outline as a result, leaving question marks, blank spots, and DKs where I was stuck. (DK = Don't Know, which is easily searchable in a draft since "DK" is an unlikely letter combination.) And I also -- to my surprise and delight -- started coming up with new ideas and solutions for issues I'd been trying to solve in my head rather than through the process of writing.
Since then I've wrapped up my outline and starting writing pages for the script, and it's going faster than I've written in a long time.
It's filled with notes and flaws and details to come.
And that's totally okay.
Because the biggest win in this small segment of my writing journey is that I'm LOVING the process of writing again. And that's worth more to me than just about anything.
by Jenna | Dec 10, 2014 | Writing Articles
Writing consistently, regularly, and honestly is a challenge.
But it's a challenge worth meeting.
And when it comes to delivering on that task, it turns out that discipline is an over-rated solution when it comes to writing. Having a writing system and habit is what gets it done, day in and day out. But even when you have a writing habit in place, you still have to constantly refine it, improve it, and raise the bar when you get complacent.
Because there are times in our writing lives when we can become complacent. We can hit rough patches and take breaks. We can lose momentum or get our writing disrupted by travel or work or kids or LIFE. We can lose confidence in our projects and our ability to write. We can get knocked on our asses by feedback that takes weeks to recover from. And we can also fall into writing without purpose or intention, particularly when we don't have specific deadlines or milestones we're trying to hit.
The problem is that this kind of complacency will suck the vibrancy out of you, your writing, and your writing life. You might appear to be productive, as one of my writing community members said this week, but really, you're asleep with your eyes open and you know it. And it doesn't feel good.
The solution?
Recommitment.
When you find yourself in this place, it's time to recommit to yourself as a writer. To your writing. To your writing life.
It's about shifting back into a higher gear. Treating your writing like the life's calling it is. Making it a priority. Making it happen.
7 ways to recommit to your writing
When you find yourself phoning it in or going through the motions, here's what you can do to change it up and get back on track with what you were put here to do:
- Write like your life depends on it. You’re here to write, right? So do that. Take your writing seriously. Move mountains if necessary to make it happen, even if you’re hitting only your barest minimum “rock bottom goal” for the day. It counts, and it makes a big difference to your psyche when you honor your commitment to yourself this way.
- Up your game. Check in with yourself about how you’re feeling about your writing. You might be feeling lulled into a sense of complacency. You might be feeling good about your writing and what you’re accomplishing. But if you have a nagging sense that it’s time to require more of yourself, do that. Set daily, weekly, and monthly goals to help you make that happen. Look for deadlines or create them. Get accountability into place for yourself. Do what you're saying you're going to do. Create a sense of alertness, urgency, or briskness for yourself about your writing so you remember why you are here and make it happen.
- If today you can’t write, couldn’t bring yourself to write, don’t want to write, hate writing, or something else happened that stopped you from writing, TELL SOMEONE SAFE. This is a little bit like falling off the wagon if you are a recovering alcoholic. You've got to talk to your sponsor ASAP. Get to your people as fast as you can and get help getting back on track. Tell them/us your worst, darkest thoughts about writing. We can take it. We’ve probably had those same thoughts too. The thing is, we ALL have obstacles to writing. They run the gamut from perfectionism to distraction to limiting beliefs to creative confusion and apathy. Our collective work as writers is to systematically unearth and remove these obstacles one by one so they no longer stop us from doing what we were put here to do.
- Stay out of comparison. Everyone is on their own path when it comes to writing. Someone else will be writing more than you, someone else will be writing less. Someone will be more successful than you are right now and someone will be less so. IT DOESN’T MATTER. We are all on our own writing journeys. What matters is that you are meeting your own goals and working on your writing habit and writing career based on where you are and where you want to go. So you if you see someone writing for 4 (even 8 or 10!) hours a day and someone else aiming to write for 5 minutes a day, don't worry about it. Just keep your eyes on your own paper and what you are doing for yourself. It’s all good. Just keep writing.
- Plan ahead. If you’re writing for 5 of 7 days per week or taking holidays off or whatever it is that you are doing — decide ahead of time. Don’t have the conversation about “IF” you are writing today. Know that you’re writing or not writing that day and act accordingly. Have the conversation about “WHEN” you will be writing. It’ll be much easier that way.
- Be as clear as possible about what you’re working on. This whole writing thing is a LOT easier if you have one specific project you’re working on and keep working on until it’s done. Particularly if you’re in writing habit building mode, you may find it easier to focus on simpler writing, like doing morning pages or responding to journal prompts to get started. But ultimately, being crystal clear about your project choice will give you direction, momentum, and purpose. Working on multiple projects at once (aka project stacking or layering) is an advanced skill, in my opinion. So save that for later if you’re working on strengthening your writing habit right now.
- Just do the writing. The reason I say “just do the writing” is that it really is the right solution in most cases. Thinking about writing, talking about writing, avoiding writing, and otherwise dithering about writing usually doesn’t fix whatever the problem is, whereas writing usually does. I say usually, because sometimes there are creative wounds that need healing, and sometimes we need to write about the writing to find out what’s going on with the work, but interestingly the way through both those things is still writing. So just do the writing and you’ll be in good shape. :) (And if you need help with a creative wound, I'm here to help.)
by Jenna | Aug 7, 2013 | Guest Posts
Writers who tend to join my writing community — and get the most out of it — often have both a deep call to write (whether they’re doing it consistently or not) and a specific project they want to work on, perhaps one half-completed, languishing on a shelf for a couple of years. And when they find out about the writing community, they’re eager to move past the dreaming or stuck stage into action.
This is the story of a man who has done just that.
When he joined the writing community all the way from Sweden, Rikard Bergquist had been working on his novel intermittently, struggling to find enough time to write and to move past the outlining and preparation stage into writing actual New Words. And he had a little two-year-old daughter at the time too! (She’s three now.)
After being in the writing community for a session or two, continuing to write intermittently, and listening to me (harp on about :) ) advocate for early morning writing and small writing sessions as a powerful way to jump-start a writing habit, one of our other members “threw down the gauntlet” and challenged him to try writing for 5 minutes every day and logging in every day on the site to report about how it went for him. He took her up on the challenge. It changed his life.
In less than four months, after building from 5 minutes a day to a solid writing habit of 60 minutes a day, he knocked out 75,000 words and completed his first draft. He’s still with us in the writing community now, working on revisions. He is one of our most dedicated and consistent members, showing up to write and log in on the site even while traveling — he even met me for coffee in Berkeley here the other day to talk shop while on a trip to the U.S. from Sweden. It was great fun. :)
I asked “Rick” (as we affectionately call him in the writing community) to talk to us today about his experience with finishing his novel, how he got there, and what’s he’s learned about his writing process along the way. You may be surprised to find some ideas and inspiration you can adopt for yourself.
1. Rick, first, welcome and thanks for being here. Let’s start off by having you tell about your recent major milestone — finishing the first draft of your first novel. What was that like for you?
It was one of the most empowering and surprising experiences I’ve had. Empowering because finally this dream of a novel I’ve had for a couple of years was becoming a reality. I escaped the terror of the first draft and actually produced 75,000 words. Instead of laboring and trying to make early parts of the story perfect, writing and rewriting, outlining and rearranging the order of scenes, as well as reading the latest book on craft and thinking I finally got it, I did the work and now have a substantial number of written pages to show for it.
It was surprising because I did it by writing for about an hour every morning during four months — I never thought an hour a day would amount to anything. I surprised myself weekly when I saw what I had accomplished with just an hour every morning. I surrendered to the process, allowing myself to write badly, knowing that it was only the first stage in a big adventure. Overcoming that editor inside of me, who kept telling me it was crap, was a big victory. And my first draft is the result. Now I know that first drafts aren’t supposed to be outstanding perfect novels, they’re just supposed to be written.
2. Can you give us a soundbite about what the story is about and about who you are?
The story is set in the 1570s of Stockholm, Sweden. In a power struggle for the crown our hero supports a new queen for the throne, who turns out to be a murderer, poisoning her competition. When his secret love interest is surprisingly accused and imprisoned for the murder, without any hope of pardon, our hero has to choose between his career or saving her. And what price will he pay for the choice he makes?
I work in the financial industry, for a private equity company, with business development. It’s hands-on management in selected individual companies in a wide range of industries. Writing is for me a creative outlet and a possibility to follow a totally different path.
3. What have you learned about your writing process from participating in the writing community?
Consistent daily work is key to my process. Being consistent means that I stay in touch with my writing, even though I might be working and doing other things during the day. The story evolves and develops in my subconscious, waiting to be served up during the next writing session. Setting goals and being accountable within the writing community, giving and receiving feedback on each others’ processes — in short, knowing that my efforts are noticed by others is a big motivator for me.
Focusing on the process rather than the craft, is a very important difference from other writing groups I’ve participated in. For me, this group is about focusing on getting the writing done, every day. What you write, how you write, and when you write is up to you. But do it every day. The accountability and support of the writing community is key to making that happen.
4. What were the biggest challenges you faced before joining the writing community? Have they changed?
My biggest challenge was finding time to write. I kept telling myself I needed chunks of at least 3-4 hours of undisturbed concentrated time to get anything done. I used to laugh at friends telling me how someone they knew had finished a novel by coming in 15 minutes early to the office and using that time to write. “It just isn’t possible,” I used to say, but now I know better. I kept on trying to find my big chunks of time, getting them here and there. It was a constant struggle. Looking back, I feel like I wasted a lot of time thinking about how to find time to write, but never doing the actual writing, and instead ending up feeling frustrated and lost. I knew I wanted to write, but why didn’t I just do it? I wrestled a lot with that question. With the help of the writing community I established a habit of rising early and writing for an hour every morning. Consistently.
5. When you first joined the writing community in May 2012, what was your writing habit like and how did it evolve? Were there any key moments where you shifted your habit? Was there a particular trigger or did it build over time for you?
At first my writing consisted of sporadic big chunks of time, where I spent the first part of each writing session reconnecting with my story and the latter part coming up with some new tweaks to my outline, synopsis, and characters. I always felt happy and satisfied afterwards, but not continuing to work on it over time always made me question my earlier work when I got back to it. And I was never moving into writing actual words, paragraphs, and chapters of the book, just staying at the outline stage.
There were two key moments for me — One: I followed the advice from you, Jenna, and fellow members of the writing community to adjust my target amount of writing time downward until I found a suitable amount that I could do consistently every day. For me that was five minutes. How amazed and surprised I was of the power of those five minutes. It changed my world — I connected on a deep level with my story and gradually increased the five minutes to sixty minutes per day. At first outlining scenes and then actually writing the first draft.
And this is where my second key moment occurred — Two: I could not get myself writing. I stalled. I reworked. I was stuck. Again following advice from the writing community I gave myself permission to write badly. I told myself “I am writing crap,” and suddenly I was writing about 750 words during that hour every morning. And surprise, it wasn’t all crap.
6. What advice do you have for other writers?
The only way to do it, is to do it. Complete the journey from the first page to the last page. If you can’t do this, it’s game over. Because without the first draft, you have nothing. You need a lot of faith to do it, faith in your unproven ability to write a novel. But give yourself permission to fail, to write crap, to make mistakes, to forget your outline and synopsis and before you know it, you will have your first draft.
7. What’s next for the novel and for your writing?
Right now I am revising the draft. Aiming at having a first rewrite done in a couple of months. There are times when I feel like giving up, but I now know that that’s only part of the writing life. It’s a constant flow of ups and downs, you just have to trust the process and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Finishing this first draft, I will turn it into my second and then my third, or as many as I need to finally hold an amazing novel in my hands.
8. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
Have faith, never give up, and know that in the end you’ll succeed. Once you’re in the habit of writing, trust the process to bring you to the finish line. If you feel down and lost during the journey, just tread water and wait for the next creative wave to come. It always does, have faith.
Thanks, Rikard!
You may also be interested in:
by Jenna | Jun 12, 2013 | Writing Articles
When you first start a new habit, it’s awkward.
I’ve made the mistake more than a few times in my life of throwing in the towel if I “blow it” early in the process of building a habit.
Over time, I’ve come to see a misstep like that as a little “Oops!” and either go for a do-over or a promise myself to start again tomorrow.
This is part of why we make sure to hold our writing community as a guilt-free zone. Yes, we’re encouraging people to write every day (and when I say we, I mean me and the other coaches for the writing community). And we also keep in mind that we are doing deep, hard work, and there will be missteps and challenges along the way. We’ve ALL struggled to create habits, and it’s no good punishing ourselves when we get off course.
I’ve seen some terrific examples of people who started out just focusing on writing 5 to 15 minutes a day and now have completed novels and scripts they can call their own. It’s very exciting!
As you embark on a new habit, here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Remember that building a new habit can be awkward — be gentle with yourself about it.
Give yourself lots of space to make mistakes and get back on track. Don’t throw in the towel too early like I did. Instead, see anything that doesn’t work as information about what you might want to adjust as you go forward.
Recently I’ve been experimenting with increasing my daily writing time and shifting my schedule so that my writing takes an even more central role in my life. As I’ve been doing so, I’ve found myself fumbling my pretty-well established gym habit and getting caught in some awkward procrastination moments. Instead of deciding, “This isn’t working,” I’m tweaking my approach and studying my results every day to see what I can learn about what might work better for me tomorrow.
2. Approach habit building with an experimental mindset.
Along these same lines, if you approach your writing — or ANY habit — with the spirit of experimentation, you can give yourself some freedom to keep exploring until you find something that DOES work, instead of feeling like a failure for what doesn’t.
For instance, let’s say you’re trying to build a habit of writing daily and you start by committing to 5 minutes a day. But every day you find yourself not getting around to it at the end of the day and feeling too exhausted to do it. That’s good information, right? Waiting until the end of the day isn’t working. What else could you try? Morning writing? Lunchtime writing? Committing to write for 5 minutes at a specific time of day with a friend who will also write for 5 minutes at the same time?
3. If you have a rebellious nature, factor that into your plan.
If you tend to rebel against schedules and structures, try to factor that in as you plan for your new habit.
I find myself “getting all tragic” if I try to force myself to write seven days a week. (My writing community members got a real laugh out of me saying that on one of our live coaching calls once.) Instead, I’ve committed to writing six days per week, always giving myself one day off from writing. It feeds my inner rebel and helps me feel refreshed for jumping back into writing the next day.
4. Know your procrastination tipping point and adjust accordingly.
On the other hand, you’ll also want to pay attention to when it starts to get hard to restart if and when you take days off. I’ve found that if I don’t write for a stretch of time, it’s HARD getting back on track. Up until now I’ve found that taking two days off is the point at which it gets hard for me to restart the next day, but I’m going to experiment with it further now that I’m increasing my weekday writing time.
So notice the point at which it becomes hard to restart and consider not exceeding that point whenever possible.
5. Know that it’s better to start small and start now — something is more than nothing.
Most of us who work with building regular writing habits are here for a reason — we struggle with procrastination and perfectionism more often than not (they feed each other in an endless cycle of perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis).
An important mindset shift you’ll want to make is recognizing the value of SOME progress versus NO progress. If I had written for 15 minutes every day for the last 10 years, I’d have at least 8 to 10 scripts under my belt at the same rate I’ve been developing my current one. No guilt or blame though, just a fact.
Also, know that when you’re habit building, you’ll want to go for doing ANYTHING first, then work up to more. We like to have our writers in the writing community write even for just five minutes a day or just focus on logging in to our online site every day for the first week — simply to put the focus and attention on the writing on a daily, regular basis. After that, it gets easier to bump it up to more over time.
So remember, frequency and consistency, not quantity, at least to start. Later you can go for consistency AND quantity. :)
You may also be interested in:
