Write Every Day: How to Meet Your Daily Writing Goals

Write Every Day: How to Meet Your Daily Writing Goals

If you still have doubts about whether you should be writing every day, it’s time to kick them to the curb.

Writer after established writer gives the same advice: to build your writing skills, you need to stretch them on a daily basis.

Stephen King says you should write every day until you meet a predetermined word count. Of course, it doesn’t have to be 2,000 words, but you have to start somewhere.

Author Bill O’Hanlon recommends starting by writing for 15 minutes a day. And this doesn’t mean spending 15 minutes staring at a blank screen or rewriting that first sentence for the 15th time. It means making a genuine effort to write, whether it’s starting the next chapter of your novel or simply freewriting.

Whether you write to a particular word count goal or choose a time limit, you need to find a strategy that works for you. Just remember: it doesn’t matter which method you pick as long as you use it.

Create a habit of writing every day

While “just sit down and write” is common advice, creating a habit of writing every day can be challenging for different reasons. Some writers struggle to find time to write creatively between unpredictable schedules, full-time jobs or families.

First, acknowledge your time or energy constraints — the size of your canvas, as James Clear calls it. Then, work within them to train yourself to write, using strategies like freewriting, creative rituals and eliminating all distractions.

Make tomorrow’s first step simple

Starting to write each day can be the hardest part, but you can set yourself up for success with a little preparation at the end of each day.

One strategy is to stop writing mid-sentence at the end of every day. This way, the next day you won’t spend hours trying to figure out where to start; you simply finish that sentence and keep going.

Take it a step further by copying that last sentence into a separate document at the end of each day. Spend some time writing out a few possible directions or a brief outline for tomorrow’s writing.

The next day, work only from that new document. This way, you won’t be distracted by the possibility of editing yesterday’s work — you’ll be focused on creating today’s.

Use technology to help you

Blogger Buster Benson suggests writing 750 words each day. To help himself and others meet this goal, he built 750 Words.

[bctt tweet=”Use technology to help you write daily. @Buster suggests writing 750 words each day. “]

This simple tool provides a distraction-free writing environment and lets you know once you reach your daily goal. The writing you produce is totally private, and a subscription is $5 a month after a free 30-day trial.

Sticking to a tighter budget? Try some of the many free apps and programs available to help your concentration and productivity.

Try Seinfeld’s calendar system

Someone once asked Jerry Seinfeld for advice on becoming a great comedian. His reply was simple: buy a big wall calendar and hang it somewhere you’ll see it often.

Every day you meet your writing goal, mark a big X in red marker over that day on the calendar.

“After a few days you will have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

Easy, right? Just don’t break the chain.

Use this technique to meet specific writing goals. For instance, if you’d like to write a ebook, track your writing specific to that project on your giant calendar — if it’s in addition other writing, just use another color of marker.

Don’t have (or want to buy) a calendar? Writer Nora Bailey created an Excel spreadsheet formatted as calendar, with number of words written under specific days. When she meets her writing goal each day, the “total words” field automatically turns green. (Click to download a version of the spreadsheet.)

It’s deceptively simple to negotiate with yourself that you won’t be doing any writing today. You can say it’s late, you don’t feel like it or simply deny that you ever really wanted to start writing. The trick is in putting those excuses aside and putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

There’s no one strategy that helps all writers write every day. Experiment to find one that works well for you!

It's great. I wrote 750 words, everyday, for 385 days straight. If you've read The Artist's Way, you can see all the benefits of morning pages maybe a week or two into it.

The first few days are hard since you're probably not used to just dumping your brain on paper and you'll hit a few blocks before you manage to fill up the 750 words. It took me 20-25 minutes each day for a couple weeks. But at some point a switch turns on and it comes really easily that 10-12 minutes in your day is nothing compared to the benefit of getting a fresh view of your thoughts every day to put things in perspective.

The sense of accomplishment when you get that first badge for writing 10 days in a row, or finishing that first month challenge, is pretty addicting. And Buster Benson and his support staff (of 1, last time I checked) are really good about restoring your streak on those days where you don't have internet or their server is down when you're trying to get in those submissions in a few minutes before midnight.

Also, honestly, I think this is the most amazing way to see yourself change over the course of a few months, even a year, much moreso than photos. When there's no inhibition to write exactly what's on your mind, you're archiving so many things about yourself that will surprise you down the road (not that you're encouraged to be re-reading the stuff you write).

I can't pinpoint why I stopped though. I think I was clinging on to that streak number too hard and one day decided to just let it go. After that, it was easy not to go back. Maybe it was a little like what Cal Ripkin Jr. went through :).

Lessons From Writing 750 Words a Day for 365 Days

December 1, 2013 By Ben 21 Comments

One year ago I set out to write 750 words a day, using the site 750words.com, without any set goal in sight. I just wanted to improve my writing and I figured that getting in the habit of writing daily could only help. Somehow, I was able to stick with it, despite a few days where I had to miserably mash my fat thumbs on my iPhone for all 750 words.

10 Things I Learned From Writing 750 Words a Day For 365 Days

1. Process Over Product
Early on I learned to not concern myself with the output of my 750 words. I just wanted to build the habit. I knew that if I focused on the output, I’d eventually stall and stop writing because it was “good enough,” whatever that means. Maybe I’ve been influenced by Zen and the Art of Archery, but with the writing I detached myself from the product at the end of the day, suspending any judgement. The keyword in that last sentence is “suspend” not completely eliminate, as I’m eventually going to have to judge anything I publish. If I didn’t, that would make me a psychotic egomaniac. But during the first draft I don’t judge my writing, I just get it done.

2. Know Why You’re Writing
I wasn’t writing with the hope that by day 365 I’d be able to crank out a perfect 750 words each time. I had a few reasons for wanting to write 750 words a day:

– You can only get better with experience. Analysis and reading books helps a lot, which I did, but you have to actually apply what you learn for it to mean anything.
– I want to publish more books. A lot of the daily writing went toward various books that may or may not get published.
– I want to build my “writing muscle.” I’m a strong believer that the mind needs to be exercised just like a muscle. Whatever parts of the mind you don’t use atrophy.

3. Planning Always Helps
If you want to do something–anything–always do what you can to eliminate possible barriers to accomplishing the goal. With writing 750 words, an easy barrier could have been “I have nothing to write about,” but planning, even if just before writing, helped squash that alibi.

4. There Are No Good First Drafts.
The vast majority of what I wrote each day for 750 words isn’t publish worthy, mostly because it’s a first draft. This took me a very, very long time to learn, but I eventually came to accept that I’m never going to like the first draft of anything I write. That feeling isn’t weird or a signal of being a bad writer, it simply means I need to start editing the writing until I like it. A first draft is much like a contestant on the biggest loser. You’ve got to trim the fat and make your writing sweat to get it in shape. And that takes work.

On this topic, Stephen King’s On Writing is a great resource.

5. Go Full Screen / Eliminate distractions
One of the easiest ways to influence your behavior is to control your environment. Out of sight, out of mind is pretty effective advice, at least with double stuff Oreos and avoiding distractions while writing.. When writing in full screen, I was less likely to be distracted by passing thoughts or to open up a new tab.

6. Jerry Seinfeld is Smart
It was likely just over a year or two ago when I read a productivity tip Jerry Seinfeld gave about having a giant wall calendar and making an X across every day that he wrote jokes. His goal then became to not break the chain. If 750words shut down or turned off the “streak feature” it would be harder to stay motivated. People love seeing progress, in stories and in themselves.

7. Mix Up Your Writing

Sometimes I wrote thoughts off the top of my head, other times blog posts or essays for a random book. I once had a phase where I’d challenge myself to see if I could write 750 words about the most boring topic possible and make it interesting. Turns out I have over 800 words worth of thoughts about socks, though I’m not sure about the market demand for sock observations.

8. Get It Done Early
Though I haven’t followed this as closely as I should have, writing the 750 words in the morning produces a great feeling. It’s a weight off my shoulders, where I never have to wonder “when will I have time later to write my words?” There’s something positive about starting the day with a little accomplishment.

9. The Ultimate Practice for Writing
Writing thoughts is a fairly easy task, at least for me. The best way that I’ve found to practice writing is by writing stories. They don’t have to be elaborate, but to just use the basic structure of a person who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Writing stories is one of the best ways to improve your writing.

10. Prime Yourself
I occasionally read parts of the book Jesus’ Son, a book of fictional stories from a drugged out drifter, before writing. I’m not even sure what I think about the book, but vivid writing gets the creative brain flowing. With a sentences like this, the book frequently paints an interesting picture: “His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop.”

The biggest lesson so far:

Though I’ve already somewhat discussed this in #4, good writing is mostly good editing. It’s much easier to edit something to become great than to slowly write a perfect first draft, which I don’t think is even possible. If you want to save yourself time and sanity, get the horrible first draft out of the way so you can start making your writing great