Advice for Writers: 3 Tips to Make Your Writing Habits Actually Stick

I don’t know about you, but some days I really have a hard time focusing. But thanks to my background in behavior modification (I have a degree in psychology and worked as a dog trainer for 10+ years), I learned how to work with my brain, instead of against it, to keep me on track. Today, I am going to share three strategies I use every day to stay on track and organize my chaotic brain. If you don’t like daily word counts or find yourself sitting and daydreaming instead of writing, this post is for you. Let’s dive in!

Tip #1: Power Naps

One of my top tricks for focusing on writing when it is hard is power naps! I am totally not kidding. I developed this skill in college (and yes, sometimes this is a skill you have to develop if short naps don’t come naturally to you) and used the foundational idea of breaks when training people and animals. Here is the reason power naps are so important. Taking breaks, even for just five minutes, can help the brain settle emotionally, recoup some energy, and serve as a reinforcer for whatever you were just doing (e.g., writing).

Rest and sleep are important for building stamina and teaching your brain to work for longer hours. If you fall asleep during your power nap, you are letting your brain work on filing important information you just worked on, including habits. If you don’t fall asleep, the simple act of lying down and resting can reinforce your brain for the hard work you accomplished and help you relax your muscles that tense up when sitting and typing. This is especially important if you are new to long writing sprints.

Tip #2: Shaping Plans

I am not a daily writing habit person. I actually only write three days a week, sometimes four. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with the occasional Saturday if I need to catch up on things. However, on a bad week, I still get over 7,000 words. On a great week, I get over 20,000 words. On average, I get between 10,000 and 15,000 words a week. This has gotten much easier as I’ve gotten better at meeting higher word counts in one sitting, and I plan to double that once I solidify this habit. So, what’s my trick? Shaping!

Shaping is the act of breaking a behavior down into its smaller, achievable parts, learning the first step until it is successful, then moving on to the next step and repeating the process until you achieve your overall goal. Since I didn’t want to write every day and I use Tuesdays as my business day, I started by giving myself a daily word count that was super easy. For me, that was 1,000 words typed a day and 500 words dictated. If yours is lower, that is okay. Succeeding is more important than hitting a high word count from the get-go. I chose my word counts based on the fact that I can usually get 2,000 words a day. However, I am learning dictation right now (you do not have to do both at once), so I bumped my word count back a bit to accommodate the new skill.

Once I was hitting that goal reliability (key word being reliable), I moved on to the next step in my plan. At this point, I was overshooting my word count by twice what I planned. So, I took advantage of that and used that information to adjust. Instead of adding to each day’s word count, I started combining them. Soon, I had three days of writing: one with 7,000 words and two with 2,000 words. Now, when I am drafting a book, I write 7,000 words on Mondays, usually 4,000 on Wednesdays, and between 2,000 and 7,000 on Fridays.

Tip #3: Embrace the Chaos

Back in college, I learned to do something that has really paid off now. It is also something that I used when teaching. The concept is to get the ball rolling. The idea is that you don’t hold yourself to perfection. Sometimes we have to kind of trick our brains into this, especially for us perfectionists. For me, this means writing a pre-draft. The pre-draft is different for different writers, and not all authors use them. For me, a pre-draft is a draft I don’t consider a real draft, so it can be as messy as I want. This gives me permission to simply write and embrace the chaos. This lets me tell if I have a story and if I enjoy writing it, so when it comes to actually writing the book, I have something to work with. No more blank page. Just epic chaos that you can sculpt into epic adventure!

Happy Writing

I hope these tips help you. Not everyone writes daily, and that is completely okay! I hope you find how your brain works and enjoy being you! If you didn’t find a tip in this post that speaks to your brain, let me know in the comments what you struggle with. Have fun and as always, happy writing!