The Challenge of Writing Every Day

Do Numbered Lists, Templates, and Acronyms Help?

When you’re writing every day, shortcuts like numbered lists, templates, and acronyms can be helpful to readers . . . or block the flow of reading. Discover when to use these writing shortcuts and when to avoid them.

Writing | Reading | Writing Tips | Writing Prompts | Readers

Writing Every Day Willa Cather, my favorite author, wrote every day in the morning only: in New York; in Paris; in Colorado, Arizona, and California; on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy; at the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, NH.

By writing in the morning, she wrote 18 books between 1913 and 1940. She was the 2nd woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. Her partner Edith Lewis and her friends knew never to bother Willa in the morning. She was writing.

In the afternoon she edited what she’d written, read proofs, went to the theater, explored new places, hiked, visited with friends, and wrote more than 3,000 letters. (Read about my Cather letters .) She never used a typewriter.

And Willa never used numbered lists, templates, or acronyms. Ok, I’m not being fair. She was writing novels and a bit of poetry. She wasn’t writing for Medium, putting up a blog, or posting on Facebook.

But she was writing every day. So that brings me to you and me writing every day and back to numbered lists, templates, and acronyms. For the best writing, I don’t recommend these writing prompts and shortcuts. Often, they aren’t conducive to great prose.

However, most of us have lives that include more than writing every day. Some days we have lots more to do than writing. That’s where numbered lists and templates come in. They’re quick! They’re easy. Acronyms are a bit more complicated.

Lists, templates, and acronyms will help you reach your goal of writing every day. However, they won’t improve your writing in the way that writing without these crutches will. But they keep you in the flow of writing.

Your goal is to write consistently, every single day. Your goal isn’t to win a writing prize. And you never know what will get you a few claps, a comment or two, even a commendation from a Medium editor, like Dr. Yildiz from the publication Illumination. (And don’t forget the money you can earn from writing every day on Medium.)

Numbered Lists Of all the shortcuts, this is my favorite. I use it often and add enough text that it doesn’t resemble my to-do list. Remember you are writing, not making a list. (By the way 7 is said to be a magic number. 3 is common also.)

13 Ways to Avoid Writing 7 Reasons I Love ADHD Manifesting in 3 Easy Steps ( a sub-title)

Templates I already mentioned my favorite template, numbered lists: 13 Ways to . . . , 7 reasons why . . ., 6 Pet Peeves, 42 Things Your Kid Wants for Christmas, 6 Tuna Casserole Recipes from Great-aunt Gertrude.

The “How to” template also works well. I often use it as a Sub-heading. “How to Make Your Writing Readable.” (Years ago I read somewhere that “How to” in a title increases engagement with your readers immediately. I’ve long forgotten the actual percentage, but it was up there.)

“Stock” titles can be used as writing prompts: “The Day I . . . “ “When My Dog . .” “Thoughts about . . .”

Putting “Easy” in a title or sub-title also appeals to readers. “Easy Meditation for Writers with ADHD”

My friend Jeff Herring is King of Templates. He’s got dozens up his sleeve and creates new ones frequently. If you often feel you’re staring at a blank screen, templates are a good way to get started writing. See what Jeff has for you.

Acronyms Acronyms, a kind of template, are my least favorite. I don’t enjoy the messing around finding a word to match a letter. For example, going through a long list of all the words starting with D.

When I experimented with the acronym A.D.O.P.T., it took me longer to find a word for each letter than to write the post. And one of the common downsides of acronyms is the scant use of text. In other words, often there’s little to read and thus little to engage a reader. Plus it’s hard to fit a story into the text.

Be careful that in your search for words, you stay on track with the meaning of the acronym. I realized, after I’d posted A.D.O.P.T., that what I wrote about “T” didn’t fit the word.

I’m in the process of compiling a bunch of stories for an ebook, called The Laundromat Dog. My acronym story is not going into the ebook! However, the individual stories from the acronym will.

The upside of acronyms is “building them out.” In other words, you write an entire post for each letter’s word. So if your word is 7 letters long, you’ll have the beginning of 7 posts — that’s a week of posts! Do your acronym on Monday and you’ll have a writing plan for the next 7 days.

Do an acronym every 7 days for four weeks, and you’ll have 28 posts. That’s enough to fill up February.

I built out A.D.O.P.T. by using stories I had already written. That’s cheating! “A” through “P” are adoption stories so they fit the acronym. A which stands for ADHD is also kinda cheating — lots of adopted people have ADHD. “T” has nothing to do with adoption. That’s against the rules.

Try to use all verbs or all nouns in your acronym. Avoid adjectives and adverbs.

You can learn all about writing with acronyms from my friend, Master of Acronyms Tim Maudlin. Be sure to pick up Tim’s acronym template

After you’ve written every day for 30 days, check the titles and sub-titles of all your posts. Make sure you haven’t over-used one template, that you didn’t overdo it with acronyms, that your posts are nothing but numbered lists.

Didn’t somebody once say “variety is the spice of life”? They were right when it comes to writing for Medium. I’m backing off numbered lists for awhile.

If you write every day, your writing will improve. Your ideas for writing will increase. And you won’t need as many numbered lists, templates, and acronyms.

P.S. Having written that acronyms are my least favorite writing prompt, I put the acronym A.D.H.D. on my to-write-in-the-future list. Given my expertise in ADHD, shouldn’t take me long to get that one up.

Because I’m an adoption coach for women, my writing, as one might assume, focuses on adoption. In addition, I offer words of wisdom for adult ADHDers. (Not only do I suffer from ADHD, but so do many adopted folks.)

You’ll find me at LivingWithAdoption.com. For a list of common adoption challenges, grab my free Adoption Checklist for Women: 25 Life Issues.

No surprise that focus does not come to me easily! In addition to adoption and ADHD, I also write random stories from my life, what I’ve observed, what’s in the news, about writing and editing, anything that tickles my fancy.

Watch for my eBook: “The Laundromat Dog.” Coming soon.

For a Black Lives Matter from a white perspective, see my stories For White Folks from an Old Gray-Haired White Woman with Arthritis. And Teaching Kindergarten at an all-Black school.

You might also like musings on Staying at Home because of COVID 19: The Good, The Bad, and the Not So Ugly.