How to make daily writing easy: Preparation, preparation, preparation
Lifelog • 31 Aug 2021 •
For those starting out on writing daily, a common question is:
How do I make daily writing easy? What can I do to make it easier for me to keep writing everyday?
The underrated secret to developing a daily writing habit isn’t what you do WHEN you’re writing, but what you do BEFORE you even put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
Preparation work is crucial to setting yourself up for success before you even start writing. Preparing well beforehand makes the actual writing easy later on, and in turn, makes keeping a daily writing habit easy.
Here’s 11 pre-writing productivity hacks to win half the battle:
Tl;dr -
1/ Input = output
2/ Separate writing from non-writing
3/ Amass your muse
4/ Categories to write about
5/ Collect writing prompts
6/ Recycle old writings
7/ Set up a publishing queue
8/ Kill writer’s block
9/ Less choices
10/ Learn from habit experts
11/ Bring your own challenge
1/ Input shapes output.
Media consumption is like food consumption:
• Junk food = Unhealthy body 🍟💀
• Wholesome food = Healthy body 🥦🏋🏻♂️
• Mindless doomscrolling = no/bad content
• Read books, selective scrolling = great content
Simply: input = output. You get what you put in.
Consume high quality content, produce high quality content. Your writings are the result of the latest 5 pieces of content you read.
2/ Separate writing from non-writing.
Do research, find quotes, book references, studies, useful relevant information to link to, BEFORE you start writing. Or after you write.
That way you don’t have to break your writing momentum searching for a link or a quote in mid-stream. Write all the way through first, with gaps that you can come back to later.
3/ Amass your muse.
Stash away ideas, templates, quotes, notes, half-written drafts.
Take notes everywhere. Set up a system to bookmark them from social media, books, podcasts, talks, videos or blogs.
Stash it in a notebook, Notion app, or even dictate voice memos to yourself.
4/ Categories to write about your niche topic:
💪 Can - You can do X!
🧐 What - What is X?
🎅🏻 Who - Who to follow about X?
🗺 Where - Where to find X?
🤷♂️ Why - Why do X?
🗓 When - When to do X?
🛠 How - How to do X?
Then brainstorm writing topics using the above prompts.
5/ Collect writing prompts & questions.
A beautiful question never gets old. You can ask the same question at diff times and arrive at diff answers.
Check out over 50 writing prompts on Lifelog to find the right inspiration for the day.
6/ Recycle old writings.
Repurpose writings you did on other platforms or mediums.
Flip through old notebook and journals, and turn them into a fresh post.
Critique it, edit it for a new format, add a contrarian perspective, or rewrite a new piece based on your outlook now.
7/ Set up a publishing queue.
It can be a note app, a kanban board on Trello app, or just a spreadsheet containing 3 categories of writings:
❤️ Raw ideas
💛 Half-written drafts
💚 Ready-to-publish posts
That way, you’ll always have something in the pipeline to fall back on, even on dry, inspired days.
8/ Kill writer’s block at the roots.
Plan ahead in case of writer’s block. Understand why it happens (below).
Writer’s block is rarely a craft or habit problem. It’s an empowerment issue. ~ @arachneproject
Review past testimonials, encouragement from friends/readers to get a morale booster past the writer’s block.
Or simply write about not knowing what to write!
9/ Less choices, less willpower required.
Removing choices/temptations the night before means you’ll no choice but to dive right into it when you wake.
Set up your work space to be in mid-flight, internet off, notifications off, playlist open, document open in mid sentence.
The single most productive decision I’ve ever made was to completely remove my choices. ~ @ZaneDickens
@ZaneDickens shared more how he used constraints to maximum effect:
Every morning I open my laptop, which I’ve left next to my bed the night before.
My phone and headphones are there too. The genre of music for whatever I’m writing is ready, power rap if it’s non-fiction like this (there’s something about the rhymes that just works).
My laptop is completely locked out. Hence music on my phone.
I can’t alt-tab into something else. I cannot check the internet, I cannot check my email, my medium notifications.
Or any other meaningless rabbit hole that wastes the precious minutes I have in the morning.
At best I have thirty before my eldest daughter wakes up and the first disruptions start.
She’s growing up, so now I’m lucky, she spends the early morning reading to herself while daddy writes.
Then another thirty until I have to get up to make coffee.
That’s all I have in the morning.
I cannot afford to waste it on choices. On relying on early morning willpower. I remove the choice. I set up the night before, I have my habit cues in place.
This is how I write at least two short essays every morning.
I don’t have a choice.
10/ Learn from the habit experts.
Apply habit formation best practices from books like Atomic Habits, The Power of Habit, or Tiny Habits.
Great example via @dickiebush:
Atomic Habits from @jamesclear changed my life.
In Atomic Habits, James lays out the Four Laws of Behavior Change.
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
Here’s how to leverage them to build a daily writing habit
11/ Bring your own challenge.
Make up a time-limited (7-day) daily writing challenge to dive deep into one topic.
Join a writing festival (@NaNoWriMo). Buzz from a larger event/cohort is exciting and motivating.
Up the stakes and use pain avoidance to your advantage by committing money to writing courses (like ship30for30.com or Write of Passage). If you don’t write, money goes to waste.
Start small today
Truth is, any one of the 11 pre-writing productivity hacks can already help you win at the daily writing game. You certainly don’t need to do all of them to be successful at developing a daily writing habit. Cherry-pick one or two for a start that resonated with you and go for it!
By the way, we’re looking for more like-minded folks who want to start a daily writing habit to join us over at Lifelog.
Just 100 words a day. Anyone can do that.
You can do it too.