In the days of yore when I taught writing, many of the people who took my workshops and consulted with me had previously read books about writing that directed them to write for a certain amount of time every day (often quite a long time) or to produce a certain number of pages of writing every day. Or they had taken courses and been told by their teachers to write for at least an hour every day. And they all tried to fulfill those directives for some days or weeks before missing a day, and then missing another, and eventually ceasing to try. Or they found themselves forcing the words to fulfill the mandates of their gurus, and the forcing was painful and depressing, so they quit and felt like failures.
When I told my writers that such arbitrary directives almost always fail to help writers establish a viable daily practice, and that they were among hundreds of thousands of people stymied by such misguided orders, they felt much better about having terminated the self-torture; and they wanted to know what I recommended they do to establish a writing practice.
Writing, I told them, and I mean handwriting, is a physical activity as well as a mental activity. If you have a goal of doing twenty pushups, and have never done one pushup or only ever done a few, I think you will agree you would be foolish to try to do twenty pushups on your first try. You will have a much better chance of attaining your goal by starting with one pushup and working your way up to twenty, gradually, over many weeks of practicing. Similarly with writing, if you have a goal of writing for an hour every day, you will have a much better chance of attaining that goal by starting with five minutes and working your way up from there.
Furthermore, every writer is unique. You may be someone for whom, ultimately, writing every day is not ideal. You may be a three days on, one day off kind of writer. Or you may be a half-hour in the morning, an hour in the evening writer. The idea that everyone should follow someone else’s arbitrary idea of how much and how often a person should write has proven to be hugely destructive of the creative impulse in countless people who tried to follow such ill-conceived directives.
We develop habits through repetition of behavior. Every time you do something, your neurological system makes a brain map, an actual map in your brain composed of sequences of synapse firings, and this map is literally etched in your brain. Every time you repeat a particular behavior, your brain map for that activity is strengthened. When you repeat a behavior hundreds and thousands of times, your brain map for that behavior becomes a veritable super highway of habit.
So if you wish to develop a viable writing practice, decide on a comfortable place to write, show up there every day with the intention of writing something, and stay there, uninterrupted, for an amount of time that feels reasonable to you, whether you write anything or not. I suggest you begin with fifteen minutes. You probably will write something, but if you don’t, that’s okay. Or if you write for a few minutes and nothing more wants to come out, that’s okay, too. The important thing is to show up every day for a certain amount of time with the intention of putting pen to paper and seeing what happens.
If you enjoy writing exercises, start with a writing exercise to get your writing juices flowing.
I knew one writer who began her daily writing sessions by writing a postcard. She had a little stack of postcards with stamps affixed, and after lighting a candle and asking the writing gods for inspiration, she would write her postcard. By the time she completed the postcard, her writing engine was warmed up, and off she’d go. Or not. In any case she was there. Ready.
That’s the key: every day readiness in a situation conducive to doing. If you do so every day for seven weeks and don’t get in the habit of writing for a time every day, then perhaps writing every day, at this point in your life, is not your thing. Okay.
Many aspiring writers would say to me, “I need a goal, a purpose, something to inspire me.”
I would respond: in my experience, goals and purposes emerge from the practice, not the other way around.
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