5 Ways to Build a Writing Habit

Writers write. 

That's really all there is to it, but the best writers make it a point to have a daily writing habit to make sure their works in progress are moving their way toward the finish line. 

A book won't write itself and sporadic writing sessions can leave your book a bit disjointed and inconsistent in the end. 

Here are five ways to help you build your writing habit. 

Set Achievable Goals

Nothing will put you off your goal faster than failing it over and over again so make sure when you are setting yourself up with a goal, it's one you can achieve. 

Whether your goal is to write 50 words a day or 5000, make sure it's one you can achieve consistently. 

Achieving your goals will give you a sense of progress and accomplishment helping to motivate you to keep on marking the days of success in your calendar. 

Establish A Writing Routine 

Having a writing routine is going to be the number one way to help you turn writing into a habit. 

It can be something as easy as sitting down to write as soon as you wake up or something you do in your car during your daily lunch break at work. 

Consistency and repetition will form a habit and writing will become almost second nature to you. 

Start with Small Writing Sessions 

Maybe you've tried to build a writing habit but weren't able to commit to it every day because you haven't yet been able to make the time. 

Start with ten minutes a day. 

That's enough for you to at least write a whole paragraph depending on your typing speed. 

The next week move it up to fifteen and then twenty the next week. 

Start small and then work yourself up to longer writing sessions. The minimum you should be aiming for daily is half an hour or up to an hour, but there's nothing wrong with aiming for higher if you can spare it. 

Eliminate Distractions

You do not need your cellphone to write. Even if you have a writing app on your phone, I would prefer you use old fashion pen and paper to write. 

Using your phone will inevitably lead to distractions with text, calls, or other social media notifications that plague all of our screens and suck away our writing focus, but if you have to use it make sure to install another app that will block you from scrolling TikTok or Twitter or whatever site is your number one distraction, turn off all notifications, set an alarm for your designated writing time, and don't stop for anything, not even to check how long you have left. 

That's what the timer is for. 

Track Progress and Celebrate Milestones 

Nothing helps motivate children in school with a task quite like receiving stickers, I even had a high school teacher implement this as a way for us to raise our hands during class and it was the only class I ever had where almost all of us would be an active participant and raise our hands. 

Keep a notebook to track your progress or an online word count logger so you see that you are making progress even when it doesn't feel like it.

Reward yourself for this progress no matter how small you may think it is, it's worth celebrating. 

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Building a writing habit will be the number one way to establish a writing routine that works for you, but no matter what there's one important aspect of it that you have to be doing - 

Writing. 

Now go do it.

With love, 

B. King xo xo

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