Developing the Writing Habit, Part I

 
When talking with aspiring writers, you inevitably get questions about “getting on a schedule” or “sticking to a schedule” or “making time to write” or “getting in the habit” of writing. Boiled down, the question is basically, “How do I make myself write?”
 
But if you listen beyond the noise and get to the question behind the question, it’s actually more like, “How do I make myself want to write?”
 
(And some so-called experienced writer will inevitably answer the first question with, “It’s easy. If you really want to write, you’ll make time.” Which, besides being rude and dismissive, is also not helpful. And as we’ll eventually see, it’s also kind of bullshit.)
 
If you’ve been writing for a while, it’s easy to forget what it was like when we first decided we wanted to try writing. It’s like trying most other new skills: we’re not sure if it’s for us, we’re not good at it yet, and we probably don’t automatically enjoy it. We just know we want to give it a try. So we attempt to get in the habit of writing. And this is where a lot of aspiring writers flounder.
 
There are lots of books and theories and videos on the science of developing habits, with lots of different ideas on what it takes. Sometimes I think we’re focusing on the wrong aspect – it’s not just the number of repetitions, it’s the feedback we get for doing it… the intrinsic feedback. In other words, if you approach writing in a way that works for you (i.e. gives you results that make you feel good about writing, and about yourself) then you’ll want to continue this behavior. And vice versa, of course.
 
Just wanting (even wanting really really badly) to be a writer won’t necessarily lead to you becoming a writer. We all know people who have “wanted to write” for years, yet never really do. And I don’t think this is necessarily some moral failing on their part. I just think they didn’t approach it with the right mindset, and consequently didn’t follow an adequate training routine.
 
Once upon a time—as an adjunct part of my main gig—I would take squad-sized groups of people and help turn them into runners. The basic goal was to have them able to run five miles or so, including up and down hills, as a means of increasing their overall CV fitness. This training happened over a period of 12 to 16 weeks. There’d usually be a few who were already pretty fit and active, and then there would be a good sized group who were of average fitness but hadn’t run since their school days. We’d start pretty low and slow, but even so, right after the first run I’d always get the question: How the hell do you ever learn to actually enjoy this?
 
And I’d say, running is like smoking. Really.
 
Let’s say you’re a teenager and you want to smoke (because your friends all smoke and you want to be cool like them, of course). And the first time you smoke you feel pretty much like you do after your first run—your lungs hurt, you’re nauseated, and you feel like you might puke at any moment. And if you only smoked once every couple of weeks, you’d feel crappy every single time you smoked. But instead you do it pretty regularly. And after a while you can smoke in front of your homies and not cough like a dweeb. Then pretty soon you don’t really mind it that much. Then you find yourself sort of looking forward to it. And—if you hang in there and continue to smoke regularly—after a while you really enjoy it and then you discover you have to do it.
 
And then the punchline: Well, running is exactly like that.
 
And it is. But guess what? So is writing.
 
Which is why my most fundamental advice to aspiring writers is always: Try to write regularly. For whatever value of “regular” works for you and your life. I’m the last person to tell someone when and how much they should write—you know better than anyone what your life-load can handle. However, I think I can safely say if you write for 45 minutes and then not again for two or three weeks—when you write for half an hour—and then you don’t write again for a month or so, when you manage to squeeze in an hour, and so on… you’ll be like the intermittent smoker, continually starting over from ground zero.
 
Because here’s the big secret... the thing that the smug “you just gotta make time” pundits don’t tell you...  You don’t make time. You allot it.
 
And there’s also a secret (which of course is just a marketing word for technique) to successfully allotting time.
 
Which we’ll talk about next time when we discuss the hidden value of scheduling.
 
Until then, happy writing!