The Best Writing Habit To Start In The Next 30 Days

Looking to start a new habit to help you along your writing journey? Since it's the beginning of the month now is the perfect time to implement one into your routine.. and it's even a bonus that it's a short month so if it doesn't work you don't have to stick with it for too long. 

So while there is an abundance of things I could suggest you add to your writing routine such as drinking water, not being hard on yourself, and most importantly writing 👀 I have a better suggestion that I am about to embark on myself so we can try it together. 

What is this elusive habit?

Morning Pages 

This habit is almost exactly as it sounds, but also not quite. 

A habit inspired by Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" this habit involves writing just three pages of almost nonsense each day. 

How could this be helpful? If you wanted to just write nonsense you would just sit at your writing desk and begin banging around on the keys with a bunch of useless words. 

Well - that's exactly what you're supposed to do. 

Morning pages claim to lead to:

Unburdening your mind - decluttering it from any thoughts worries, or distractions that might otherwise disrupt your focus in the morning. 

Ignite your creativity - Free-flowing and unfiltered writing just might be what you need to kick-start your mind into something that you won't be able to stop. You could think of that big climax you were stuck on in your novel or come up with an idea for an entirely new one. 

A consistent writing routine - one of the hardest things about writing sometimes is finding the time to sit down and write but by making it the first thing you do in the morning it'll be easier to make it into a consistent habit.

How To Do It?

1. Set Aside the time to write 

I recommend keeping a notebook beside your bed and setting an alarm for anywhere between 15–30 minutes before you would normally wake up so that you'll have no excuses not to just reach over and grab it to start writing. 

2. Put your pen to the paper

If you're like me you probably haven't handwritten much since you graduated from school. I know it can be tempting to want to reach for that laptop or to sit at your computer and type away. The physical act of putting pen to paper will achieve a few things. First, it's going to be much harder for you to get distracted on the way since you won't need your phone or to pass any other social media sites that may be calling out to you. Second, there's no backspacing on a pen. 

Sure they make fancy pens now that can erase, but you have three pages to fill out and only a few minutes to do it… do you really want to waste some of that time erasing? 

3. Don't stop

This is the most important step. From the time that timer starts counting down and the moment your pen touches the paper, you should be off to the races writing down anything and everything that comes to mind from your plans for the day to what you hope to achieve in your writing goals for the day. 

This in no way needs to be perfect, consistent, or even legible if you don't want it to be or aren't capable of it being, (it would take several experts a few years to understand what my pages currently say.) 

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The habit of writing in the morning starts your day off on a successful note whether you can complete all three pages or not because at the end of the day, no matter how bad it goes.. you'll be able to say that you still wrote. 

Rain or shine, through wind or snow, even if you spilled your coffee or accidentally sent a cat meme to your boss instead of the daily reports. It won't be able to be that bad of a day, because you at least wrote something. 

Or - at least you now know what you'll write about the next day. 

Best of luck and give it a try. 

I'll update you at the end of the month on how my process went. 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

Want to write with me live? I'm now on Twitch! Come join me in some writing sprints most days at 10:00 pm EST

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