WRITER 2 WRITER: WRITING THROUGH THE BAD DAYS

You’ve set a goal to write regularly, if not every day. But then something happens: a child gets sick, the plumbing backs up, the car gets a flat tire…

You know what I’m talking about. And it doesn’t have to be “big” problems that throw a wrench in your day. Maybe you just have too many other things on your plate and writing isn’t a high priority. It’s easy to say you’ll get to it later, or tomorrow, or next week. But be careful.

As Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man said: “Pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”

If you want to be a writer, you must WRITE.

Writing isn’t a hobby or something you do to pass the time. For many of us, writing is a serious pursuit, a career. You wouldn’t wake up to a crazy day and say, “I guess I won’t go to work today.
Too many other things to do.” So, make writing THE priority. Here are three ways to do it:

1. WRITE FIRST – No matter how long your to do list is, writing should always be at the very top.  

2. SET REACHABLE GOALS – If your day doesn’t allow for 2,000 words or three hours of writing, write 500 words, or 250. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Whatever you can realistically manage, but write something. 

3. BE FLEXIBLE – If you’re faced with a serious challenge, and you don’t feel like working on your latest sci-fi novel, then write something else. Write in your journal, or a letter to a friend, or a poem. The goal is to avoid procrastination, to keep your writing schedule in tact. But if you need to change up what you write today, then do it.