#personal udpate

I’m a big fan of writing every day. I believe in it so much that I built an app that helps people write every day. Many successful writers do write every single day. But do I think that you have to do that to be successful? No.

Of course not! Your readers have no idea how you write. Most of them probably don’t really care.

Writing every day is simply a tool that many choose to use to fit their writing practice around their lives and get their words done. If you have a different process that works for you, then you definitely shouldn’t start writing every day.

However, most people have day jobs to go to, kids to raise and businesses to run. They don’t have 12 straight hours free in a day to buckle down and get all their words done at once. Writing every day, half an hour here, an hour there, is the only way they can carve out the time to produce enough words to move their writing projects forward.

Because of how our brains are wired, if you keep doing it for long enough, it gets easier. Writing becomes a habit, and your day feels incomplete unless you wrote something. You simply keep doing it even if you no longer have to. Terry Pratchett said that he wrote every single day for years because he was terrified of what would happen if he stopped.

Creating a habit like that is very difficult. If you can do it, though, it will most certainly pay off handsomely.

You have to write

While you absolutely don’t have to write every day, you have to write a lot.

Publishing is very competitive, whether you choose to self-publish or go the traditional route. If you’d like to be one of the top authors in the world, you’ll have to write quite a bit to hone your craft and produce enough stories to stand a chance.

The way we perceive writing differs from other disciplines. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that most of us can write already. You wouldn't aspire to become a world-class pianist and only practice once or twice a month. You also wouldn't expect your paintings to rival the Mona Lisa when you only paint once a month.

You can’t finish a novel in a month. But you can do it in less than six months if you write 500 words every day. Or you can write 3,500 words every Saturday. Or do whatever else works for you.

Regardless of what you do, it will be hard work. When it comes to writing, there are no shortcuts. There’s no guarantee that it will work out either, but if you keep showing up and doing the work, you’ll know that you gave it your best.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Radek 👋. I’m a writer, software engineer and the founder of Writing Analytics — an editor and writing tracker designed to help you beat writer’s block and create a sustainable writing routine.

I publish a post like this every week. Want to know when the next one comes out? Sign up for my email list below to get it right in your inbox.

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Past Editions

#210: Ed Sheeran on Writing, August 2021

#209: Good Writers Copy, Great Writers Steal, August 2021

#208: Write Like a Painter, August 2021

#207: On Being Stuck, August 2021

If you knew that nobody would ever read your work, would you keep writing?

Let's be honest, most of us probably wouldn't. Regardless of what people say, I doubt that most would keep writing stories for 30, 40 or 50 years without even thinking about readers or publication. We're social animals, after all. Then there's the tree in the forest stuff. If nobody has ever seen it, does it even exist?

Most writers (and artists) hope that one day, someone will appreciate what they did. There's nothing wrong with that. I certainly wouldn't be publishing my musings here on the blog if I didn't want people to read them. It's important to stay motivated. But there's a downside to this too.

When you're thinking about your readers while writing, pretty soon you'll realise that you'll also be judged. That someone will read it and think it's the stupidest shit they've ever seen. We've all read something and thought that.

For some people, this self-doubt can be crippling. Most writers struggle with it in one way or another. Steven Pressfield called this resistance (check out the War of Art — it's a fantastic read).

The hope that people will enjoy your work helps you stay motivated in the long run, but it can slow you down when you're actually doing the work. You can't give it up! So what do you do?

Here are some things that helped me get over myself.

Free-writing

I've been journaling for many years now. The way I do it evolves constantly. At one point, I used free-writing.

Every morning, I set a timer for 30 minutes. I started writing anything that came to mind as fast as I possibly could. I never share my journal entries with anyone, so the quality didn't matter to me.

My original intention was to teach myself that words are cheap. That I can write more at any point. That I have an endless supply of them. I did this for over a year, and it helped me a ton. But I also discovered that when I was just writing for myself, I wrote more than 4x faster than usual.

The sheer quantity of words I was able to churn out in under 30 minutes was insane.

Throwaway Stories

This is another way to learn the same lesson.

Some writing teachers and courses use an exercise that asks the students to spend an hour working on a short story. The class expects to be presenting it at the end in some form. They work hard on making it the best they can.

At the end of the hour, the teacher asks the students to destroy what they wrote without showing anyone. Pretty harsh but effective.

The lesson is simple: what you write now doesn't matter. You can always write something else.

Writing for Yourself

Sometimes, the best way to write for an audience is to write for yourself. Write as if nobody will ever see it, as if you will tear it up and throw it into the fire (or hit CTRL+A and DELETE).

After all, you don't have to publish every story you finish. If you don't like it, you can delete it later. Or you can revise the hell out of it so even you won't recognise the original.

When in doubt, just write for yourself.

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Past Editions

#186: A Stimulus Check for Your Mind, March 2021

#185: Always Behind the Schedule. March 2021

#184: The Most Important Skill for Writers, February 2021

#183: The Writers’ Love-Hate Relationship With Writing, February 2021

How long do you need to finish a story? A year? Three months? Two weeks? One day? It depends on how long it is, right? A book will take way longer than short fiction.

But what if length didn’t matter? You have to finish a story. It doesn’t matter how long. How much time do you need? Can you do it in an hour? What about 15 minutes?

When you do something for a long time, you develop a set of assumptions around the process. You get used to doing things in a certain way. Over time, these calcify into a set of personal rules that you're unwilling to break. It happens to me all the time.

Write a story you say? I can certainly do that, but, I'll need to think about it first. Then I'll write an outline and start drafting. A few days later, I'll come back and do a few rounds of edits. If everything goes well, there will be a story.

One of the most prevalent assumptions writers have is that creating stories is a lot of work and takes a long time. Often, that’s true. But does it always have to be the case?

Here’s a challenge. Can you finish a story right now? If you’re out of ideas, start with a prompt. If you don’t have much time, make the story as short as it needs to be to finish it in time (6-word stories count).

These are the rules:

It doesn’t have to have an arc, three acts or anything like that.

It doesn’t have to be good.

You don’t have to publish it.

You don’t have to like it.

It just has to exist.

All right. How did it go? Was it fun? Was it hard to do?

The real question is, could you do an exercise like this every day? How good a storyteller/writer would you be if you wrote 365 tiny stories like this every year?

The best way to improve as a writer is to write a lot of different stories. This is exactly how you do it. Sometimes they can be longer. Sometimes they’ll be short. What matters is that you’re exercising your creative muscles and putting words on the page.

Over time, you might find yourself returning to the same character over and over again. Or maybe you’ll combine a few stories into one, and an idea for a novel will be born.

And in case you’re curious, here’s my draft:

Morrison shifted uncomfortably in his recliner.

“Have you been drinking today, Mr Morrison?” his therapist asked.

“Of course not.”

The therapist stared at him the way she always did.

“Fine. I had one beer when I woke up.”

The therapist raised her eyebrow. “One? When you woke up?”

“Just one.”

She kept staring.

“I don’t have to tell you.”

“You’re right. You don’t,” she said. “I booked you for a mandatory screening on 34th Street at 1 PM. Your probation officer has been notified.”

Now, it was Morrison's turn to be quiet.

“Tell me, Mr Morrison, why today?”

He knew she wasn't real — just an avatar with an AI pulling the strings — but he still hated her.

“After 822 days,” she said. “your probation was due to expire next week.”

Morrison clenched his fists. “Let me out of here. Now.”

“I can’t, I’m afraid.”

“It's an emergency! Let me out.”

Her image disappeared, replaced by the blue glow inside the mental health pod he was lying in as it executed the emergency evacuation procedure. The cover unlocked, then opened. Outside, four others queued for their turn.

Morrison stumbled out into the rain, his ankle monitor buzzing. He had no idea where he would go, but it sure wasn't going to be the 34th.

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Past Editions

#197: Whatever You’re Doing Can Be Fixed, June 2021

#196: The Shiny Object Syndrome, May 2021

#195: Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?, May 2021

#194: Your Inner Critic is Wrong, May 2021

The blank page is the arch-nemesis of the writer. But it makes no sense. It's the only time where we have the ultimate freedom to do anything we want. Shouldn't we cherish the fresh start? A clean slate?

Well, that's the theory. In reality, we all want to create something good. And that's the problem.

At the beginning of a project, it's really hard to know whether it will end up being worth anything by the end. What's worse, we start to worry that if whatever we do in the beginning isn't good enough, it will somehow corrupt the rest of the project, and our efforts will be futile.

The fear of failure strikes us the most when we're staring at the blank page as if it had a message scribbled for us in the margins. 'Make sure you don't fuck this up.'

Once we get going, things become a lot less daunting. Suddenly, there are characters interacting with each other. The possibilities are still endless, but a little less so than when the page was blank. And that makes a huge difference.

Putting something down anchors your thinking. It creates constraints. You no longer have to come up with something perfect. Your task now is to make what you have a little better. You have to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and find new ones to fill the blanks.

The good thing about creative constraints is that you don't have to wait until you have something to take advantage of them. You can set some constraints for yourself even before you start writing.

I've seen a street photographer do this brilliantly. Every time he went out to shoot, he would give himself some constraints. One time, he decided that he would only take pictures of arches – anything that he found on the streets in the shape of an arch. The next day, he would only take photos that had windows or glass in them.

Instead of running around, frantically snapping anything and everything, he would pass on all the other shots that he would've normally taken. This really focused his mind and forced him to come up with some incredibly creative shots as opposed to the old-people-squinting-into-the-lens staple of street photography.

Did he miss some great shots like that? Probably. But he would've never seen the ones he took if he let himself be distracted by all the possibilities.

Now to the big question: how can you apply this to your writing? Make decisions upfront and stick with them at least until you've finished the full first draft.

👉 Think about what genre is your story. Genres have all sorts of tropes and limitations that you'll need to adhere to. For example, romance readers expect a happy ending. If you decide to write a romance, you no longer have to think about how will it end.

👉 Plunge your characters into a random situation and then work out how they solve the problem.

👉 You can even start by writing fanfic using your favourite characters and then swap them out with your original ones.

👉 Any constraints are better than nothing.

Creative constraints are a fantastic tool if you need to get unblocked or want to come up with something really creative. It may seem that setting up a bunch of constraints will limit your options, but they will set you free.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a massive Writing Analytics feature that I've been working on for months. It will come out next week, and I can't wait for you to try it – it's changing my writing life as we speak.

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Past Editions

#151: My Favourite Writing Podcasts, July 2020

#150: The Business of Making Art, July 2020

#149: All That Matters Is What You Leave on the Page, July 2020

#148: Keeping a Victory Log, June 2020

With everything that’s been going on over the past several weeks, staying focused has been frustratingly difficult for me. There’s a lot to be anxious about – the numbers on the news going up, the government briefings getting more and more uncomfortable. The increased cognitive load wreaks havoc on any type of deep work that I need to do – writing, reading, programming.

Instead, I’m always looking for the refresh button, eagerly awaiting the next bite-sized news item that always ends up being another speculation at best. I’m well aware that I’m not getting any value from reading those live updates — reading War and Peace backwards would probably have about the same effect. But why is it so difficult to step back?

In this post, I’d like to share the strategies that I’ve been using to combat these viral bouts of procrastination. If I got anything done since the lockdown started, I was because I used one or more of these hacks.

(1) Time Your Sessions

This is an old trick but a good one.

Set a timer for however long you wish you wish to write and write away. You’re not allowed to do anything else until it rings.

You can use a time tracker like Toggl or one of the apps that block certain websites until the time is up to ensure compliance. I like using the Forest app on my phone.

(2) Track your words

Timing your writing sessions is great, but what if you don’t feel motivated enough to even schedule one?

I’m a big fan of tracking your writing – how many words you write and when. Just like tracking calories or workouts, the simple act of recording them will result in a change of behaviour. By tracking what you wrote, you’re also tracking how much time you’ve wasted – if you haven’t written anything for weeks, you’ll have a clear record of that.

That’s what does it for me – seeing all opportunities to get words done that I’ve missed. I start questioning whether I should be pursuing writing in the first place when I’m clearly not doing it, and that gets me back on track.

I built an app for this called Writing Analytics which I can thoroughly recommend 😄. It’s also free until the end of May 2020!

(3) Build a streak

Another way to stay motivated is to build streaks. Whether you’re developing a new writing habit or maintaining an existing one, ticking a box every day can be a surprisingly powerful way to stay on track.

The more days you have on your streak, the more you’ll want to keep going. For me, the key to streaks is to make the criteria for ticking that box as easy as possible – like reading 5 pages or writing 200 words.

On busy days, I might bang out 200 words on my phone while queuing at the supermarket. On good days, those 200 words are just enough to get me to the flow of a writing session. Low expectations are the key.

You can use a grid printout. The Streaks iPhone app works pretty well, and Writing Analytics also supports streaks.

(4) Get Accountability

A few things are better to spark a fire under your ass than external accountability. You have several options here – from posting your daily word counts on social media to sharing your goals with friends or writing group.

Having to explain your repeated failures to write anything to another person can be very uncomfortable. That really is the point – it becomes easier to write than face the embarrassment.

Some writers find a writing coach or accountability partner and check in with them regularly to make sure both are getting their writing done. When all else fails, it might be a sign that you need one.

(5) Match time spent reading the news with writing

Checking out social media and reading the news is the first thing many people do every day. It’s also a huge mistake. You’re barely awake and already distracted.

What if you could only check social media and read the news for as long as you’ve spent writing that day? Wanna see if the world is still on fire? Write for 15 minutes and you earn 15 minutes on Twitter.

Staying off the news and social media may be unrealistic, but you can make sure that you strike the right balance of consumption and creativity by putting your writing first.

Final Thoughts

These were some of the hacks that I use to focus on my writing. Normally, I will combine at least two or three and switch them up depending on how much support I need at a given time.

I hope that they’ll help you be a more productive writer at least until we figure a way out of this pandemic.

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

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(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#137: How to Create a Writing Routine for Life, April 2020

#136: The Words Will Add Up, March 2020

#135: Quarantine Survival for Writers, March 2020

#134: Focusing on the Right Metrics, March 2020