Monthly Archives: April 2017

Writing Habits

Time to start reading more

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As I designed this writing regiment my intentions were to allow myself the ability to slowly work myself back into my writing. When I showed my wife the plan she made me realize that this program could be used by more than just writers. She has a lot of different art projects that she wants to tackle and like me she was finding it difficult to find the time to work on them. She started using this program herself.

Over the weekend I finished out the first full week, with today starting out the second week.

Week 1 Day 6

The sixth day and subsequently every sixth of the week is the day the most writing is completed in any given week. Since this was the first week it wasn’t too difficult. The day consisted of two writing sessions each for 30 minutes. So, one hour of writing for the day.

This is why I chose to begin the program on Monday. Saturdays are the best day for me to get a lot more done, so it’s the day that I want to write the most.

Week 1 Day 7

Rest day. Similar to the sixth day, every seventh day is a rest day. The seventh day is always a rest day due to the sixth always being a more heavy writing day. As weeks progress this rest day will become a much needed day.

Week 2 Day 8

Like the first day of last week there is no writing. However, there’s a new addition to the program, reading. As a writer you have to read. It’s a must. Personally I think everyone could benefit from reading more. For today, read for 30 minutes.

I personally like to alternate reading between three books, a fiction book, a non fiction book, and big book (1000 pages or more). Currently I’m reading Michael Stackpole’s Tricknomancy, John Acuff’s Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work That Matters and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Sherlock Homes.

It’s important to expand your knowledge and understanding of your craft. Use this day to read something fun, or use it to research information for the project you are working on.




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Get paid for your work, even if no one buys it

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Another two successful days completed in my writing program. While the program does start easy, it still causes me to exert extra energy to compete the writing days.

Take yesterday for example, Day 4. I just wanted to sleep. With the weather changing my sinuses have been acting up. Yesterday I had a massive headache. I had to force myself to sit down for 30 minutes and work on my book. I made good progress. While my head was pounding I kept working. After I was done writing I found that the progress I made was much better than the first.

Today, Day 5 is a rest day. Tomorrow will be a different story, more writing.

One of the things that I’ve begun to do to keep myself motivated is to pay myself for my writing. Since I’m treating this as a part time job I worked in giving myself a paycheck, albeit a very small paycheck. For every half-hour that I write I pay myself $0.50. At the end of the week I tally up all the writing sessions I completed and transfer the funds from my checking account into my savings account. This savings account is dedicated just for my writing. With the money saved I plan on buying things such as a new word possessing program, MS Word 2003 is a bit out of date.

Right now I’m keeping these posts short and only do a quick edit on them. So I apologize if something doesn’t read right. As the writing program progresses I’ll have more time to spend on the blog.

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Writing Habits

Write, rest, repeat

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Yesterday was day 2 of my new writing program to help me get back into the habit of writing. And yes this time I did write. I wrote for 30 minutes. This may not seem like a lot of time. Let me just say it seemed to last a lifetime.

Being out of the habit of writing I struggled to get anything down on paper. In fact, I hated everything that I wrote, but I still did it. I had to force myself to stay in my chair with my fingers on the keyboard. I won’t lie I was very tempted to quit and do something else. But I made a promise to myself to not quit.

If you are just starting out just write whatever comes to your mind. You will have plenty of time to go back and edit. Turn off your inner critic. I know that’s hard for some of us, but it needs to be done. Just write and discover your story.

My story is written, well sort of. I’m currently editing the book. Unfortunately the beginning of my story is terribly slow paced. So for the 30 minutes I wrote a new beginning, then stopped, wrote another new beginning, stop again, and kept this process going the whole time.

While what I wrote was horrible, my mind is now in a better place to come up with something better. Sometimes you have to get the garbage out onto paper before you can get the good stuff out.

Today, day 3, was the same as day 1, do nothing. Why? The brain is a muscle and needs time to rest. I’m allowing my brain relax and not get over taxed. If I kept forcing myself to write my brain would eventually shut down and I would be back to square one. This method is working; I’ve had more ideas on where the story should start than I have in a long time.

I’m off to a good start. Three days in and looking forward to the fourth.




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Writing Habits

…and we’re back!

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I haven’t been a good writer this past year. I allowed myself to be burned out by projects at work, which limited my willpower to edit my book and write these blog articles. At the end of last year I had the opportunity to transfer into my company’s marketing department. This has allowed me to be more creative on a daily basis, this also kept me from being too tired at night to do anything.

Sometime in January I realized that I had the energy and the capacity to begin writing again, but I didn’t do it.  I kept saying to myself, “I’ll work on it tomorrow.” I said this practically everyday for four months. I had become out of practice and lazy. Writing and creating my own work is my dream job. I’ve always wanted to be my own boss, set my own hours, and create novel after novel. So what was stopping me? Nothing was, but myself.

Years ago when I first became serious about my writing I wanted to treat it as a part-time job. While I was able to write for hours every night I quickly felt overwhelmed and burnt out. When I finally decided to get back into the habit of writing again I didn’t want a repeat from last time. I knew if I tried to go all out and spend every evening writing I would quickly crash and burn. Not to mention my wife would kill me.

This got me thinking. How many other creatives out there wanted to begin doing something they love but:

  1. Didn’t know where to start.
  2. Was afraid of what others would think because they were spending all their free time to doing something new.

To ease myself and my family into a schedule of me writing more I came up with a 20 Week writing plan. By the end, my goal is to be writing at least 20+ hours a week, essentially a part time job.

Today is Week 1 Day 1

The goal for today is write nothing. Simple right? I did this to trick my brain into thinking I accomplished something. I’m sure some of you are like me that made a plan to start a project and then, for whatever reason, missed day one. Discouragement and a sense of failure soon follow. These feelings usually gave me the excuse to give up on the project. So Day 1: Just relax and look forward to tomorrow. That’s when the real fun begins.




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