Writing as a Habit

What keeps you from writing your magnus opus?

Is it time? Do you simply not have enough of it? Are you busy at work, and exhausted when you get home? Raising kids and exhausted all the time? Or do you suddenly have so much time that the pressure to work has slowly evaporated?

Believe me, I can relate.

When I still had tiny kids at home, my sleep was so wrecked anyway I would get up between first morning nursing and the mid-morning nursing write then. When the kids got a little bigger and we could all sleep through the night, I wrote for a few hours after their bedtimes. 

Then they all went to school and the whole day stretched in front of me …

And my writing crashed and burned.

Seriously – too much time, not enough structure, and what Natalie Goldberg calls “the monkey brain” took over. I couldn't focus. I felt fear, imposter syndrome, the dishes and laundry became very very attractive … because I had so much tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.

Yes, there are challenges to having too little time – and yes there are challenges to having too much time – but I finally found a solution to both problems when I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. His thesis is simple: habits are made when you make them easy to accomplish by removing any and all points of friction in your way.

I remove friction in two ways: 

First, I do most of my writing by hand, because that allows me to write wherever I am. If I can't get to my office, I can write at my kids' baseball game, or waiting at a dentist appointment, or parked on the side of the street waiting for grab a kid from a sleepover. 

Second, I set very easily achievable goals: I hit my daily writing goal every day by drafting 100 words. That's it. 100 words are always doable. 100 words take no time. They're not always good words, but more often or not, just getting through those 100 words gets me loose enough to keep going until it's 250 or 500 or 1000 words down on that page. And all those extra words are great, but they are just gravy – because I accomplished my goal when I hit those first 100 words.

Which reminds me – I need to go write today's 100. 

Go write yours!

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