WRITING | PRODUCTIVITY | PERSISTENCE | HABITS | WRITE EVERY DAY
How To Write Every Day
It’s not as hard as you think.
Successful writers tell us to “write every day.” Study great authors and you find they write every day. They write when they don’t feel like it.
The 30-Day Writing Challenge
When I first started in a writing platform, my mentors suggested a write-everyday-for-30- days challenge.
I re-posted a bunch of old blog posts. I posted some already written chapters from a book in progress about my birth-father who was killed on D-Day after parachuting into Normandy. I re-posted some old stuff from EZine Articles. Only half or less of what I posted was new. I met the challenge.
It got harder when I ran out of content to re-post.
Why I Don’t Always Meet My Every Day Goal
All too often, I make writing every day too hard. I get a brain storm for a story. It’s complicated, lots of moving pieces, a long outline. Probably requires some research. I don’t think about how I might divide it into 2–3 stories.
The result is a story that eats up a day. I’ve gotten nothing else done. The next day I can’t write a story because I have to do what was on my list for yesterday plus what’s on the list for today. Some of these stories have gotten lots of response, have been curated, are still being read. But not because they’re long!
My favorite example took more than two days, a review by a friend who knew nothing about what I was writing to make sure she understood it, research, and going through several drafts to get the order of steps correct. Also required a ton of editing to make sure kinda techy stuff could be understood by non-techy readers. It’s a whopping 13-minute read. I could have divided it into a couple of articles.
I come at this business of writing on various platforms with several self-imposed obstacles. I have a PhD in history. Historians LOVE to do research. That’s a big reason we chose that field. Research is time consuming. Gets in the way of this write-every-day thing.
Historians write. We write books and long articles. Our books usually have long chapters. Our articles are often long, if not too long. We like to write . . . and write . . . and write. And we believe in leaving nothing out.
And I’m a teacher. I’ve taught everything from kindergarten to graduate students at Ohio State University. I’ve taught online courses. I’ve done dozens of in-person workshops from short 1/2 sessions to full three-day workshops where attendees got CEUs. Teachers love to teach. Teachers believe in being thorough, not skipping a point or glossing over a section.
So much for my excuses. What are yours? And it isn’t lack of time. I won’t dwell on that as several top writers have written about the “myth of too little time.” In short, if you want to write, you’ll find the time.
5 Easy Tips for Writing Every Day
- Keep a list of ideas and notes for stories. Add to this list frequently. I keep my list in my draft folder. Sometimes I’ll think of a point I want to make in a story on my list. I can easily go into my writing platforms, find my draft list and add the point under a temporary title for my story.
- Start your new story the night before. I often get a title, subtitle, picture, and first sentence finished before I go to bed. Now I’m set to continue in the morning.
- Write what’s easy for you and doesn’t require much if any research. Write about personal experiences and your opinion about something.
- Write what you know well. That’s why Tip 3 above works.
- Establish a schedule. For lots of writers on various platforms, they report that writing first thing in the morning works well. Many famous writers wrote in the morning. For example, Willa Cather wrote every day until noon on her novels and short stories. Often in the afternoon, she wrote letters, 1,798 letters!
Challenge yourself to write every day for a week, then for two weeks, then for a month. The more you write on a regular basis, the more it will be come a habit. And your writing will improve.
These stories were mentioned above:
