A few years ago, I lived to write. It consumed everything I did, except caring for my kids, and I was perfectly happy with that. Then, a hell-storm of terrible events blew through my peaceful life. My writing career came to a grinding halt. Now, I define my life as the “Before,” the life I had before it fell apart, and the “After,” the life I rebuilt and transformed into something else entirely.
Between the Before and the After, I shed many tears, believing I would never write again. If I’m being honest and kind to my former self, I had good reasons to believe that and during that time, writing wasn’t even close to being a priority.
Eventually, my life gained a new normalcy, and I entered the After phase. Yet, I still wasn’t writing, despite knowing that one of the few constants in my life was a love for and a belief in my stories. I ran through my reasons not to write. I didn’t have the mental space for it. My circumstances are less than ideal. I lacked time and energy. On and on, my list went.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’ve had a similar experience. If so, I’m sorry to hear it, friend.
I don’t know when it finally clicked, a few months ago, I suppose, but I finally accepted that there would never be the “perfect time” to write again. There are no writing gods ready to descend from above and remove the obstacles that first stopped my writing career. And those gods certainly wouldn’t remove the inconvenient, distracting, and heart-rending obstacles that keep falling across my path, either.
Accepting this truth, I asked myself, was I willing to let these obstacles prevent me from reaching my goals?
As this is my first blog post, you don’t know me, but my closest friends call me Game Lord. For good reason. Strategy is my shadow, and losing my enemy. Giving up? That’s the worst form of losing. So, join me as we strategize our way back into writing and beyond to achieve writing success. Here are my 7 ways to build writing habits when you thought you’d never write again.
7 ways to build writing habits
Get Over the Pity Party
I don’t mean to sound callous, but at some point, the pity party has to end. When my life fell apart, I literally didn’t have the mental space for my imaginary worlds because my reality had more than enough drama. I started this mental list of the circumstances that needed to align so that I could start writing. When I thought this alignment occurred, life would crumble again. Finally, I realized nothing would ever align as I thought it would.
Accept this reality: there will NEVER be the perfect time to write. So stop:
whining about what prevents you from writing
making excuses to not write
wasting time only talking about writing again
crying about what happened to you to procrastinate or justify why you’re not writing
Whatever shattered your life sucked, and it likely wasn’t fair. I believe me, I feel and understand you, but if you let the excuses, the procrastination, the justifications, and the tears consume you, you’ll never write again.
Create a Work/Life/Writing Balance
I’m a person who won’t stop a task until it’s finished. Put out a 1000-piece puzzle and I’m likely to be awake until well after midnight working on it, ignoring every other responsibility. This isn’t my healthiest personality trait. As I dive back into writing, I can’t dive in as far as I did in my Before life. Frankly, I can’t with all my new responsibilities. How can I juggle work, life, and writing?
Organize your responsibilities into three categories: must-do, would-like-to, and is-that-important? Must-dos are responsibilities you can’t put off or outsource. My must-dos include lesson planning and grading for work, exercising to maintain health, and making dinner. Would-like-tos are responsibilities you can complete later, outsource, or leave undone indefinitely, like the cross stitching that’s been in my nightstand for longer than I’m willing to admit publicly. It’s something I want to work on, but it can wait (obviously).
Then, there’s the is-that-important? Binge watching, mindless scrolling, mobile games, the tasks that magically suck our time away without our noticing. (Are you feeling attacked? Because I do…) Track how you spend your time. Are you completing the must-dos? Do you limit or eliminate the is-that-importants?
Decide on a Schedule
I’m notorious for creating hour-by-hour schedules (and not sticking to them…). Regardless, schedules help me shape my day to accomplish my goals. Create a schedule that covers the must-dos, weaves in some would-like-tos, and removes most of the is-that-importants.
Next, identify when you are most creative. For me, I am most productive in the morning and spend more time on is-that-important tasks if I’m up late. Knowing this, I shaped my schedule to improve my productivity and decrease wasted time by going to bed and waking up earlier.
Be Reasonably Ambition
With your must-dos and schedule in mind, how ambitious can you reasonably be? In my Before, I wrote the first draft to Unknotted in one month. Could I do that in the After? No, that’s not reasonable for me anymore. But I can’t let that be an excuse to not chase my dreams.
You determine how ambitious you can be by how much energy and time you can and will pour into your writing goals. So, ask yourself, where do you want to go and how quickly can you reasonably get there? What resources do you need and what will it cost you to get there? What are you willing to give up or postpone to be a writer?
Create Realistic Goals
Okay, so you’ve sorted out your must-dos, formed a loose schedule that identifies when you’re most creative, and you know how ambitious you can reasonably be. Time to put all of that together to define your goals.
While clearly defined goals are a great idea, I recommend starting with a broad, overarching goal. For me, that goal is I want to be a self-published author. Then, break that goal into smaller, more easily achievable goals. For example, I set the goal to wake up early to give myself an hour to write before work. This simple goal helped me write a handful of chapters in only a week. That’s more than I’ve written in nearly two years!
Find Your Inspiration Again
Why did you want to be a writer? For me, I had told myself stories on walks, in the shower, falling asleep, cooking dinner, building a retaining wall… Since I could remember, I was always telling myself a story. The urge to put it down finally overwhelmed me, and so I did. Sure, it took over three years to finish my first novel, The Lost Defender, but I did it.
My mind can’t wander to those imaginary places as it used to, so I have to be deliberate in sending it there. Return to places that inspired the stories in you. Do the activities that helped shape your characters.
Or try something new. If you’re stagnant, then your imagination will be stagnant. Find a busy area and people-watch. Read a story or watch a show that’s out of the norm for you. Learn more about the world around you. Watch documentaries, subscribe to science articles, and follow local, national, and global news. Inspiration is everywhere so long as you’re looking for it.
Finding a Support Group
Last, but vitally important, find a support group. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve just been through hell and your self-esteem isn’t intact nor healthy. Writing is a hard road full of self-doubt. You’re going to need people to boost your ego when you’re feeling low and other writers to show you that you’re not alone in the struggle.
Create a diverse support group comprising friends and family and fellow writers. Family and friends are there to give you support, regardless of how your writing is going. They only want you to reach your goals without getting burnt out. They’re there to tell you all your ideas are genius and you’re “literally the best writer ever.” Even if you know that’s a lie, it still feels good to hear it.
Finding fellow writers can be difficult. There are many online groups of other writers with similar goals to you. Not only can they help answer questions about writing craft and publishing, but they can empathize when achieving those reasonable goals you set are feeling more unrealistic and unattainable. They can remind you that if they can do it, so can you.
Conclusion
Be kind to yourself. That’s what people say, right? But no one ever explains the difference between “being kind to yourself” and inhibiting your own growth. Growth needs time, energy, and willpower. We get to decide if we’re going to fuel our growth or stunt it, regardless of how poor the soil is that we’re growing in.
Life will inevitably knock us all down. Loss–be it through death, a break-up, end of a career, declining health, or a thousand of other ways life steals from us–is inevitable. While we can’t control everything that happens to us, we can control how we let it affect us. Will we let the pains that life throws at us be the excuse that prevents us from becoming whatever it is we want to be?
The hell-storm that blew through my life crippled me for more years than I wish it had. My circumstances still hurt me, still bother me, but they don’t get to define me. I had to realize that these obstacles that halted my writing wouldn’t vanish, but I could choose if those obstacles continued to deter me from chasing my ambitions.
Like I said, my friends call me Game Lord for a reason. I don’t like to lose or give up. What happened to me, doesn’t get to steal my dream of writing. Not anymore. I have a plan, and now, so do you.
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