This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 121, A Writing Practice That Works for You.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Warner. And I just spent several days working through what I wanted my writing practice to look like. I had planned a little bit of flexible time into my schedule because I had an appointment to get my second COVID vaccination. And I really wasn’t sure what to expect from it. I had heard from many people that the second vaccination kind of just laid them out for a couple days. A lot of people reported having fevers and nausea and just all sorts of very unpleasant side effects. And so my shot was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. And so I kind of figured I’d be out of commission for the rest of the day. And I thought I would use that time just to kind of figure some stuff out for myself and my business and life.

So it turns out I just had a little bit of nausea and lightheadedness and was just kind of basically tired, which is not unusual. Right? I think that a lot of us are just used to feeling really, really tired lately. So I spent the day sitting on the couch and drinking tea and just allowing myself time to work through something that had been really bothering me. And that was this notion that even though I’m self-employed and I’m a full-time writer, I don’t really feel like I have what could be called a writing practice.

Now I hope you had a chance to listen to the episode from two weeks ago, episode number 119, which is called Trusting Yourself, because I think that that episode represents, not to like overstate it or anything, but I think it represented a turning point for myself and for a lot of this show. So if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, go back, listen to it. I’ll be here when you get back. I promise. And to me, the irony was not lost that two weeks ago I had spent all of this time talking about trusting myself. And then here I was telling myself that I didn’t know how to create a writing practice or really what a writing practice actually was and what it should look like and how a writing practice was different from a writing habit. And hopefully, the irony is not lost on you either.

But there I was on the couch feeling slightly nauseated, sipping tea, thinking about why I felt like I didn’t have a proper writing practice and what a proper writing practice was. I want to take a moment to tell you that I’m not perfect. And so even when I come out with an episode about a topic, it doesn’t mean that I’ve necessarily solved all of my problems regarding that topic forever and ever. As I’ve said before on this show, life is a constant experiment. Life is a wave after wave after wave of lessons and learning and adjusting and trying new things and continuing to learn and adjust from there. So despite having an episode called Trusting Yourself, it doesn’t mean that I a hundred percent forever and ever know how to trust myself in every single matter. But I’m learning.

So I received a really beautifully thought out comment in the show notes for episode 119 about learning and trusting yourself. And I promise this ties in with today’s lesson. So stay with me. This comment was from podcast listener Chris, and I’m just going to share a quick excerpt from it. Chris writes I’ve noticed very often the most brilliant “doers” do not make for the best teachers. People tend to be unable to distinguish between what is/was their individual experience versus how things actually are in the larger objective sense. I’m a professional artist and I’m continually stunned at the misinformation and pseudoscience about art making, such as light, color, et cetera, that comes from artists who on the other hand produce amazing work. Often when they describe their own process, if you observe them, it’s not what they’re actually doing.

For one thing, there is confirmation bias. So they tend to overemphasize those things that appear to echo existing dogma as a way of bringing legitimacy to both it and them. Another is, though this is a sensitive subject, some things tend to come more easily or naturally to some people, whether due to intuition or passion. In any case, as a result, many of the best artists, and with that I include musicians, writers, chefs, et cetera, simply cannot articulate how they do what they do, yet they believe they can. It is like trying to explain to someone how you recognize your mother’s face.

As learners, we tend to believe that imitating the masters of our personal idols is a path to similar greatness. More often, it is the opposite. Their path is not our path. And even if we wanted to follow their path, we couldn’t because they are not seeing or communicating it accurately. My point in all that is to say, as you learned from listening to that podcast, we really cannot trust the masters to be our teachers.

I love receiving comments like this out on my website. And I invite you to comment as well. You know, just while I’m here talking about it, every single episode of the Write Now podcast has a corresponding show notes page, or essentially a blog post about the episode. And you can find those out at sarahwerner.com, that’s sarahwerner.com. So, yes. Wow. Chris, this comment was so thoughtful and insightful, and it really launched what I wanted to talk about in today’s Write Now podcast episode.

As I said, I had spent a significant chunk of my day researching writing practices, and essentially every single one of them sounded like they were making the impossible seem simple and that the people who were explaining their writing practices or their writing habits or whatever you want to call it possessed some kind of inhuman dedication and perseverance, or at least something that I myself have not experienced. Many of the blog posts and articles and essays that I read shared the most simple approach to a writing habit, and that was the butt-in-seat approach. So set aside time, usually they would say every day, sit down in your chair and write. Many of them gave advice that I have given before, and that is sit down and just start writing. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be words.

But as I read this advice given by other people, and as I read it as an outsider to this practice, I thought about how many times I’ve tried doing this and how many times once you get 20 nonsense words in or 200 nonsense words in and the frustration just boils up your neck and crumples your head like a sheet of paper, how for me it was so much easier to break this practice than to keep it. It was so much easier to get up and do the dishes or do some laundry or work on some project for a client than it was to force myself to push out words that I hated. And the more and more accounts that I read of this, the more I realized how easy it is to give advice and how difficult it is to take it and incorporate it into your life and practice it.

It also bothered me every time I read the word just. Like, oh, just sit down in your seat and start writing, or just write every day, that’s it, as though nothing could be simpler, as though writing wasn’t some kind of wrestling process with our determination, our will, our creativity, ourselves. And then I thought, well, maybe writing is just harder for me than it is for other people. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I’m some special, little magical unicorn who suffers unduly. I don’t think I’m alone in finding it difficult to write. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that this podcast even exists.

As I read these articles, I kept looking for certain things. I kept looking for guidelines that I could follow or maybe adapt to fit my own lifestyle. I found myself looking for shoulds, our old friends, the shoulds. I found myself looking for, okay, does this writer sit down in their seat and write for 40 minutes every day? Do they write for four hours every day? Do they measure it in time or word count? Do they sit down and not stand up again until they’ve hit 1,000 words or 2,000 words or more? Are they doing this alongside another job? Are they doing this with kids, with pets, with a family? And then the biggest question, are they really doing this at all?

I’m going to say it. I’m just going to come out and say it. Sometimes when I read accounts of writers who sit down every day rain or shine and write for four hours every morning, take a walk, have lunch, and then come back and write for four more hours uninterrupted with perfect focus, I sometimes find myself a little doubtful. And I wonder if this is reality or if it’s an ideal.

I know many of us have read Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s a wonderful book. And in it he talks about writing three, I think 364 days out of the year. And I think he takes off Christmas or something. And I know Stephen King is incredibly prolific, but does he really write for eight hours every single day? I know he’s past the age where he has young children from home or has to pick them up from daycare. But doesn’t he have sick relatives to visit? Doesn’t he have to go get his COVID shot? Doesn’t he get sick? Doesn’t he get depressed? Doesn’t he have one of those days where he sits down and starts checking his email and then gets onto social media and then realizes four and a half hours later that he still hasn’t written anything and that he has to go pick up groceries in 10 minutes and then he has a Zoom call with some relatives who want to catch up?

Honestly, this is part of the reason that I changed the slogan of the Write Now podcast. So if you go back to my earlier episodes, the original tagline for this show that I opened each episode with was welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write every day. And I took out the every day because it was not something that I was doing myself. That’s right. I am, right now I am a full-time writer who does not write every day. So how could I ask that from anyone else? Why would I make that an additional should? I can’t do it, so I can’t tell other people to do it.

I really appreciated Chris’s comment on episode 119, and you can go read the whole thing yourself if you want to. I just quoted what was pertinent for today’s episode. Also, thank you, Chris. If I haven’t said that already, thank you for this insight.

It’s really easy to spout ideals and to say, well, if you want to be a “real writer,” whatever that means, then you should write every day. Just sit your butt in your seat. Just write. It’s that simple. Maybe for some people it is simple, but for me, and if you’re listening to this episode, maybe for you it’s big and weird and complicated and hard. And it’s tangled up in our identity and our self-worth and our dreams and our regrets. Because do I regret not writing every single day? Yes. I would love to write every day. Is it possible? Is it feasible for the life that I’m living right now with other decisions that I’ve made and other things I’ve prioritized to write every day? No. But I do want to write more regularly and reliably, which is why I found myself researching writing practices to begin with.

I’ve been reading a lot, not only about a writing practice but also about habits. Habits are magical it sounds like, and I’m not kidding. From everything I’ve read, from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits to Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before to dozens, and I don’t want to say millions, many, we’ll say many, many articles about habits, there’s something that we need to cultivate as writers, as creators. And they are apparently, and I don’t want to say apparently like I don’t believe it, because I believe it. It’s just hard for me to adopt habits. But habits, once you get into them, pave the way for better, more regular times of creativity.

If you make a habit out of writing, just like a habit of brushing your teeth, you kind of just do it. You don’t face the same resistance. Every evening I don’t go into the bathroom and just think like, ugh, can I do this? Can I brush my teeth? No, I just pick up the toothbrush and put toothpaste on it and I just brush my teeth. I do that every night. It’s a habit. And I do it every morning too. I don’t want you to think whatever. So we can make habits out of just about anything, including writing. But there is just something in my heart that has this knee-jerk reaction. So pretend that my heart has knees I guess. But when I hear the word habit or forming a habit, even though I know how good they are for our daily lives, there’s just something in me that rebels. I don’t like having a set schedule. I don’t like developing habits.

And I know it sounds like I’m some kind of whiny person who should just stop whining and develop a habit already. But there’s something in me that’s allergic to habits. There’s something in me that just refuses to put my writing on a schedule. And I know it sounds bad. I know it sounds like I don’t have any discipline or willpower. But even when I’ve tried, when I’ve set aside the time and I sit down and I say, “Okay, this is my dedicated, habitual writing time,” something in me just rebels and self-sabotages. And it’s not that I don’t want it. It’s like there’s some petulant, rebellious, angry, little imp sitting cross-armed on my shoulder not letting me focus, not letting me get into the habit.

I’m not saying all of this to complain to you or to say that I am special or whatever. I’m saying this because I want to be truthful and I want to be realistic. I am a writer who does not write every day, and I am a writer who does not write every day but is still looking for a kind of writing practice because I don’t want to call it a habit, some way that I can more gently fold being a writer into my everyday life, like gently folding a meringue into a batter. And maybe this is just how things start. Maybe we stumble into a writing habit, afraid to commit with big, messy lives where just is too good to be true. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you’re looking for a writing practice that is actually sustainable, that is actually flexible and fits into your life, something that works for you, that isn’t just one more thing you have to fight against.

I started by asking myself and then journaling my way through a series of questions. Starting with why haven’t I already committed to a writing practice? For me, and here’s the answers that I wrote down and there are a lot of them, for me it’s because I get anxious about scheduled things. If I see something coming up on my calendar, whether it is a difficult meeting with someone, a lunch with a friend, or a chunk of “uninterrupted writing time,” I get really anxious and uncomfortable and I start to feel trapped. This is maybe unique to me. I don’t know if this is something that you deal with, but it’s something I struggle with. And so I was honest with myself about that on the page. I’m also not great at committing to things, and I needed to be honest with myself about that as well. By this I mean I’m really great at committing to things, so great in fact that I overcommit and then I can’t follow up on my commitments.

Other answers I have written down as to why I haven’t committed to a writing practice include because I enjoy escaping too much, because I haven’t actually tried, and I underlined tried, because I “don’t want it enough,” because I’m not that “serious about my creative career,” because I want to do it for fun or when I feel like it or when I feel inspired or when I choose to, because I don’t know what a writing practice looks like or should look like.

So I want you to consider if you don’t already have a writing habit or a writing practice, why is that? Be honest with yourself. Set aside 10 minutes on a timer, or 20 minutes. Write at the top why haven’t I committed to a writing practice or a writing habit? And then be honest with what you write.

The next question I asked myself was what would be the benefit of developing a writing habit or practice? And this was easy for me because I had just read all of those books and articles and essays. The benefits would include, and this is what I wrote in my journal, more consistent writing, quality and quantity, more steady growth and development as a creator. I would finish projects faster. I would train myself to write every day regardless. I would live the real writer’s life of my dreams, whatever that means. I would give my best time and energy to my creative work, not just the leftovers and the scraps around the margins. I would face less fear of writing and failing. I would normalize writing every day. Because as so many of these books and articles have said, there’s no need to rely on inspiration or motivation when you’ve trained yourself to put your butt in your seat and write.

What I ended up doing was taking little bits and pieces out of a whole bunch of different books and articles and essays and stitched together something that works for me, and that’s really the operative word here. Because the next question I asked myself is what is the purpose of me developing a writing habit? Not necessarily what are the benefits of it, because those are pretty clear, but I had to make this relate to me. And I don’t know, maybe I’m just a narcissist. But I think we also each need to realize our own self-interest in creating a writing practice. And that comes from asking why we are writing? I ask this question a lot because it has a lot to do with how we define success for ourselves as creators. But it’s also the thing that motivates us internally. I needed to understand why writing was essential to me in order to sort of prove to myself that I needed to commit to it, that I needed to prioritize it more than I had been.

You see, for me, when I started writing, it was a coping mechanism. It was something that I reached for without needing to formalize it within a habit or a practice. Writing was something that I used to do because I needed to to stay alive. It was never about hitting a certain number of words per day or writing for a certain number of hours per day or churning out a certain number of pages per day or week or month. It wasn’t about productivity and projects. It was about existing. And I feel like that’s something we cannot and should not ignore. So for me, I realized my writing practice is not going to be something that I do every day, but rather something that I want to do several times per week. Not because I need to churn out words and finish a project, but because I need to stay alive.

So I want you to ask yourself and be very clear with yourself and very honest with yourself, what is the purpose for you of establishing a writing practice or a writing habit? And I want you to start by asking, why do you write in the first place? Now you may be completely different from me and you may want to finish a book and get it out to a publisher so that you can have your book in by a certain time or so you can make a certain amount of money or so you can earn your advance or so you can do whatever. That is completely personal and that is completely up to you. There is no wrong answer. If you want to make money writing, that is an extremely legitimate answer. I’m tired of artists getting shamed for wanting to make money. Writing is hard work and you deserve to be paid for it, very generously.

Then I want you to start looking at what does sustainable mean? What does a sustainable writing practice look like to me? I want to give a quick shout out here to Kristen Kieffer of the Well-Storied blog, who encourages us to consider three different aspects when considering the sustainability of a writing habit or writing practice. And this is based off of the main question, and this is the next question that I addressed, what creative energy do you possess and how do you complete your best work? This is not what creative energy does someone else possess, who you want to be like. This is not what creative energy does Stephen King possess. But what creative energy do you possess and what do you need to complete your best work?

So Kristen Kieffer suggests that we consider three things. Number one, our process, number two, our schedule and priorities, and number three, what it means for us to be successful as creators. So what is your process? Is there a time of day that you prefer to write? Is there a space where you prefer to write? Do you prefer to write in little five-minute bursts or do you need giant chunks of time set aside? Number two, what is your writing working around? What are your schedule and priorities? I just had to make a big list for this. So I listed out my priorities are writing, reading, journaling, creating Write Now podcast episodes every week, doing my Wednesday and Friday live streams, sending out my Monday morning Dear Creators newsletter, spending time with my family, and supporting my friends. My deprioritized items included meetings, client consults, email, and a couple of other things.

How do all of these priorities fit into your life? And I know we’ve talked about this in a previous episode of the Write Now podcast. So if you already have this written down, I want you to return to those notes and thoughts. What is a priority and what is not a priority? What matters to you and what matters less to you? Sort those things out.

Finally, the most difficult thing for me was success, this is the third step that Kristen talks about, because a week ago I would have said, well, success means getting season two of Girl in Space written by a certain date, by publishing a new episode of the Write Now podcast every week, by publishing a new Dear Creators newsletter every Monday, by reading a certain number of books every year, writing and publishing my first novel. But then I looked back at that question I asked you to consider earlier, why am I writing? I’m not really doing it to churn out a certain number of words or pages, I’m doing it to live.

And I think this is why goals have always seemed so arbitrary to me because it doesn’t matter in my heart whether I’m writing 50 words a day or 500 words a day or 5,000 words a day. I can’t make myself care about something that I don’t care about. And I realized this is very quickly becoming a manifesto for just me. But I hope that through today’s episode, you’re also beginning to clarify and crystallize the connection in your own mind between why you write and what your own writing habit and practice needs to look like in order to be sustainable. And I think when I talk about sustainability, what I’m talking about is not how are you sustaining it but how is it sustaining you? And I realized, I don’t necessarily want to finish a project and have that be what success means. I want to become. I want to learn and grow and evolve as a creator. So that was the key, at least for me, in developing a writing practice that’s sustainable and realistic.

Now your own is probably going to look very different. It’s going to be very unique and stylized and working around whatever other priorities you have in your life. But I also want to share what I came up with for my writing practice. And that is on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, morning to noon I have creative time. And I can use that creative time however I need to that day as long as it’s in line with my reasons. So that can include journaling, reading, recording episodes of the Write Now podcast, writing my Dear Creators newsletter, working on Girl in Space, starting my novel, and then the rest of my days and the rest of the week are all scheduled out based on other work. What this does for me is it gives me space, but it also gives me options so that I don’t end up feeling trapped. This creative space is flexible, and better than that it’s sustainable.

So what about you? What is your writing practice? What is your writing habit? If you don’t have one, why haven’t you committed to one? What would be the benefits of having or committing to a writing habit or practice? Why do you write in the first place? Why do you create in the first place? How could a writing practice or habit sustain your need and your reason to write? How can your schedule sustain that practice? What are you prioritizing? What do you need from the process, your schedule, and your definitions of success? What creative energy do you possess and how do you complete your best work? How do you build a habit that can sustain you instead of having you sustain the habit?

I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to hear how this works out for you, how this has worked or hasn’t worked for you in the past. If you’ve tried creating a writing habit in the past and it has not worked, you are not alone. You’re never alone. You’re in a creative community because you’re a creator. And there’s so many other people who have the exact same struggles that you do.

I would love to hear your thoughts just as Chris commented earlier, and I sort of used that to catapult into today’s episode. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the show notes for today’s episode. So this is episode number 121. And you can find the show notes out at sarahwerner.com. Again, that’s sarahwerner.com and you can navigate for the show notes for today’s episode. Once you scroll down to the bottom of that post, you’ll see a space for comments and yeah, let me know what you think. I do read and personally respond to every single comment that I get on my website. So I would love to hear your thoughts there.

You may have heard, and this is true, that the Write Now podcast is made possible by my amazing supporters out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you, yes you, to contribute $1 per episode, $2 per episode, $10 per episode, whatever works for you. And I am just so grateful for each and every one of these patrons. You may notice that I purposefully do not put ads into this show. I don’t have any paid sponsors or anything like that. I like to keep it ad-free and unbiased. Well, I mean, I guess there’s my bias, but hopefully that’s what you’re here for. In any case, special thanks go out to patrons Christine Black, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Evie Knight, Garrett, Leslie Duncan, Mark Bullock, Michael Beckwith, Mike Tuft, Sarah Lauzon, Sean Locke, Summer, Tiffany Joyner, Tim Shen, and Whitney Magruder. Thank you all so much for your extremely generous support. Your generous giving helps cover hosting costs and other costs associated with producing this show. So thank you so much.

If you would like to join their ranks and become a patron, all you have to do is navigate to the show notes for today’s episode and click on the link that says help support this podcast. It’ll take you over to Patreon where you can make your pledge. If you are not in a place right now where you can financially support anything, that is absolutely fine. I totally understand. And actually one of the most helpful things you can do is just tell someone else about this show. Show them how to subscribe, find it for them on their phone and download a couple episodes that you think would help them. That really goes a long way in getting new audience for this show. So thank you. No matter what you’re able to do, thank you. I truly appreciate it.

And with that, this has been episode 121 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I will keep you posted about how my writing practice is going.