Building Up Your Writing Habit

NaNoWriMo may be over, but that doesn’t mean you should stop writing. Here are some tips that NaNoWriMo Participant Alexis Collazo uses to keep up her daily writing goal:

The most common advice writers give is to stick to a regular writing routine, whether you feel like it or not. Like most advice, this is easier said than done. Maybe you can’t set up a regular routine, or maybe you had one and life threw a wrench at it. Sometimes no matter how badly you want to write, you still just don’t feel like it. Here are a few tips that have helped me. 

1. Write first thing in the morning.

I’ve found it easier to commit to writing everyday if I make it the first thing I do. After reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, I started doing morning pages. I didn’t like them and if I didn’t start as soon as I got up, I wouldn’t do them. I was never sure how useful they really were to me but it was an easy habit to keep up. Plans to write any other time of day usually fell victim to one excuse or another. I didn’t always stick to three pages, I’d change it to suit my needs. It was more important for me to have a morning routine I could build a daily writing practice into. I was down to a page earlier this year when I swapped them out for short journal prompts and more creative projects. 

2. Lower your standards. 

It’s easy to not write when you hold yourself to high standards. Whether it’s a time requirement or a high word count goal, it turns into an excuse when you don’t feel like writing. It’s also discouraging when you’re not confident in what you’re writing. I felt like I was wasting my time if the writing wasn’t good enough to be published.  

I had to set the bar lower. I stopped setting time based goals and started building a routine with short writing exercises I didn’t plan on sharing. One very useful tool was the book Embrace Your Weird by Felicia Day. The short creative exercises only took a couple of minutes and helped me enjoy writing without judging the work. I slowly started adding small daily goals. In July I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo with a goal of 10,000 words, about 300 a day. I hit my goal in less than twenty minutes most days. Seeing the words add up helped shift my attitude. Even days I fell short, I was able to think it was still better than nothing. 

3. Make commitments. 

Just telling myself to sit down and write barely works when I feel like writing. Committing to an event where I have to write will get me writing no matter how I feel. It doesn’t even have to be a big commitment. In April I attended most if not all the NaNoWriMo virtual write-ins. Just the idea that I’d set the reminder to attend was enough. I didn’t get a lot of writing done, but every word counts. 

For a while, I let the lack of a writing community in my area be an excuse. Once I decided to push myself I started a virtual writing group, recruiting people from Facebook writing groups then meeting via Skype. Each month we sent each other work to critique so I had to produce. I didn’t have something every month but I was writing and editing more work than before. Now more than ever my location is no excuse. The pandemic has highlighted online options and forced others to move their events, workshops, and classes online. I’ve been attending virtual writing workshops with the New York Writers Coalition and just finished a class offered by the Writer’s Center. So there are options out there for you as well!

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Alexis M. Collazo now lives in Pennsylvania. She’s an avid reader, writer and multimedia creator. Her versatile skill set has led to a varied career, as a writer and otherwise, including years in retail and office work, a short copywriting career, freelance writing and a lot of random gigs. She is currently focused on producing more creative work, including horror stories, poetry, and expanding into other art forms. You can find her crafty creations for sale on Etsy and follow her on Twitter  @lexc666.

Photo Courtesy of Drew Beamer via Unsplash.