Write Every Day

If you are striving to make money from writing, there’s a good chance to may experience the urge not to write. How do you get past this strange urge to not do what you really want to do?

“Write every day”. This is a phrase heard frequently by all writers and writer wannabes. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But writers are a strange breed. No matter how much they enjoy writing, most writers struggle with the urge not to write. When each day’s writing session rolls around, they repeatedly make cups of coffee, sharpen pencils, answer emails and otherwise distract themselves from writing. So how to you get past the urge not to write?

By writing, of course.

“Easy for you to say,” I can hear you muttering. “You don’t have two toddlers climbing in your lap while you’re trying to work. You don’t have a computer that freezes up, or a series of doctor’s appointments or phone calls that must be answered.” Etc. etc. etc.

Excuses, excuses.

The fact is, all writers have distractions and obligations. Ultimately the only way to overcome the urge not to write is to do it. In other words, the way to learn to write every day is to write every day.

If you decided today to run a marathon, would you immediately go out and run 26 miles? Probably not. Most likely, you’d have to start by walking. Walk as far as you can until you’re breathless and achy. The next day, you would try to go a little further. Soon you’d mix up walking and running. Only after time, practice and dogged persistence could you begin running all the time. From there, you could gradually add more time and distance.

And to continue our analogy a little further, does the fact that you can’t run a marathon today mean that it’s not possible you ever will? Not at all. To get from here to there, you only need to decide you want to.

The same applies to becoming a writer. You have to begin from where you are. Put words on a blank page whether they make sense or not. You can start by scheduling writing time and insisting that for that block of time, you are going to write. Note that I said “You are going to write”, not “You are going to write and analyze and edit and tear apart everything you’ve written.” Just set a block of time and write, without judging the quality, without trying to come up with a finished product. You can write “I don’t know what to write about” a hundred times if you need to. The point is, don’t stifle your own creativity. Work on developing the discipline to sit in the same position and begin to exercise your writers’ muscles. Start with fifteen minutes; build to a half an hour, then an hour or more. Overcome the urge not to write by forcing yourself to write without criticizing your own work.

The writing habit needs to be developed whether you are trying to write a newspaper column, a novel, a picture book or content for your website. If you write every day, you will teach yourself to overcome the urge not to write.

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