Building a Habit

In the last blog post I spoke about the need to build a habit of writing 500 words a day. The plan was to see if this would help with regular writing and move forward the manuscripts I am working on.

The process has been thought-provoking so I thought I should share some of it with you.

I wrote the blog post last Tuesday and as Rob Young noticed, it was 500 words long, thus achieving what I set out to do! In a typically self-sabotaging way, I then didn’t write anything on Wednesday. This would have been an easy place to stop and dismiss the exercise as unachievable. But I know myself well enough to spot that trick when it appears. So… I held onto the exercise and the aspiration – Thursday passed and still no 500 words. Failure was in my sights.

But then on Friday I pushed myself to write 500 words at about 6.0 pm just before I finished for the day and headed off with June for an early pint in a local pub. The words aren’t what mattered of course – it’s about the writing and not the content (yes, some of you will realise that this is a version of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages).

I opened a new file on the laptop and this became the space in which to write each day’s 500 words. It’s Monday lunchtime and I have kept the habit going for 4 days. Each time I open the file I set a target by adding 500 words to the word count (it goes over because of titles and slightly over-reaching each time). And then I start writing.

Last week I began reading “One Continuous Mistake” by Gail Sher. In a beautiful act of synchronicity she says about her own daily writing practise – ‘Every single day (for me after twenty years it is still every single day) your mind will offer an exceedingly good reason not to have a writing period’.

She is right – that’s why today’s words didn’t come until 11.30 a.m.

The words aren’t the point. It’s the habit rather than the content. I’m not reading them back straightaway. I will get back to them at the end of each week. It doesn’t matter if there is no gold there, just wittering nonsense. What matters is starting a habit again, a good habit.

Already, this habit has opened me up to the possibility of other writing. Thus it becomes not just about the 500 words of the day – that is the spring-board for what follows.

One thing I am not decided on yet is whether to continue with the fluidity of getting to the writing at whatever time works – or whether I should have a set time to write. My instinct tells me that if I set a specific time, I will end up rebelling against it, so it probably makes best sense to keep it open.

For now then, the daily habit is up and running. This could be my writing year. I look forward to sharing.

Also published on Medium.