9 Daily Habits Worth Stealing from Best Selling Writers
Improve your craft by stealing these high-value habits from best-selling writers.
Every writer wants to succeed. But no one is willing to follow the path of highly successful writers. That’s why some writers get 10,000 views in a day while others take a hundred days to get even 50 views.
The good news is that I’ve cracked the code of these best-selling writers. They follow certain habits which makes successful. Follow these habits and become successful yourself.
The key is to follow the habits vigorously without asking too many questions.
1. Join the 5 am Club
Robin Sharma in The 5 am Club, informs us how successful people wake up early to do the most important task with a fresh mind.
When you wake up early, you get a lot of time to be alone. You can meditate, think, visualize your day, or even list down blog ideas that you think might work.
An early rising writer gets more time to improve their craft. With a fresh mind, you can quickly move towards the next morning ritual of highly successful writers.
2. Morning Pages
Julia Cameron, in her best-selling book, The Artist’s Way, shares her habit of filling three pages of whatever comes to her mind first thing in the morning.
Keep a pen and paper at your bedside. When you open your eyes, pick the pad, and start writing. Don’t worry about grammar or sentence structuring, or even if it’s making sense. What matters is you are clearing your mind from the clutter.
“Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.” ~Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Once you write three pages, your mind will be relaxed, and you will be able to think of new ideas for your blog posts.
3. Do Your Daily Ritual
Before I sit down to write, I make myself a coffee. Not my wife, not my mom, me. I enjoy the whole process of boiling the water, mixing the coffee powder, adding a little milk, and enjoying my coffee, one sip at a time.
Kurt Vonnegut does pushups and sit-ups to warm up. Ray Bradbury reads one short story every night to take inspiration from it in the morning. Charles Dickens did a vigorous three-hour walk in the city to observe details before he starts writing.
Bernard Malamud said it best:
You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place — you suit yourself, your nature… Eventually, everyone learns his or her own best way.
When you write every day, you learn which of the rituals help you get in the zone. Don’t be afraid to do your rituals. Do them and write your next masterpiece.
4. Get Rid of Difficult Task First
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that whatever you fear the most, do it first. In writing, whenever I have a choice between a difficult and easy blog, I choose the difficult first.
Science suggests that the best times to create something is between 10 am — 2 pm and 4 pm to 10 pm.
If you feel an introduction is the tricky part of the blog, write it first; if the body feels hard, do it first. Once you deal with the difficult part, the rest becomes easy.
5. Write With the Door Closed
Nir Eyal, in his best-selling book, Indistractable, shares science-based research on why distraction is unhealthy for us:
“Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.”
Writing is a creative skill. To make a creative work mind needs solitude. And best ideas often come when we contemplate in silence when we procrastinate creatively.
When you plan to write, do it with your door closed, away from distractions. Then and only then, magic will happen, and you’ll see words miraculously jumping out of mind in the paper.
6. Learn From Your Rejections
When I first started writing on Medium, I used to send my articles to major publications. Most of these articles got rejected. But then one day, out of curiosity, I asked the editor what’s wrong with my article? And he gave me a few points.
I’ve stored all these rejected articles under one folder. Now, every day I pick one article from the folder and learn from it. I read articles and see how other writers have put their perspective into words.
7. When Stuck, Take a Break
The deadline is close, you are halfway in your article, but then your mind goes blank. You cannot think of anything, no more thoughts and ideas to proceed with the article.
When this happens, leave everything and take a break. Yes. No kidding.
Consider your mind as an idea machine throwing hundreds of thoughts per second. Focus on a task, you need specific ideas, and you cannot do that with a crowded mind.
Take a walk, listen to a song, meditate, or even watch something on tv. The idea is to relax your mind to process old things and move on to new things.
8. Visualize The End
What outcome do you want from the article? Do you want a happy client, or are you planning to add value to the reader? Are you looking to make money with the article?
Whatever you want with the article, you can achieve it. But, first, you need to visualize the result. Close your eyes, take a long deep breath, and think of the outcome that you want from the article. This will activate the law of attraction, and you’ll be able to turn your idea into reality.
9. Leave it for some hours
The first draft is always rubbish. Editing makes it a masterpiece. And the best advice I can give is to leave the article for some hours before editing it.
Because when you come back to editing after a break, you’ll be able to edit it with a fresh set of eyes.
You’ll be able to see things clearly and add more ideas to it.
Closing Thoughts
In the end, I would like to remind you that the core purpose of every article is to make the time of your reader worth it. Ensure that the blog leaves the reader with at least one good giveaway (I hope you’ll get more from this blog).
And lastly, there is no such thing as an overnight success. It’s daily hard work that adds value and makes you a genius. Work hard on these habits, and soon you’ll be writing best-selling books and articles.
