Category: Habits

Persistent Patient Practice  


 
Persistent patient practice? Is it that makes a great writer or artist? It can’t be that simple…or hard. Let’s visit the question again. Why is anyone great really? What talent do they possess that so many never seem to have?
 
Many people think there is some secret they are missing. Some say there is a talent that is bestowed on just a chosen few. The conspiratorialists will tell you there is some fix set against the masses. Some guy behind him will tell you he has a hack or short cut that will fix things for you to beat that conspiracy.
 
None of that is true. You can talk to a million people and few of them will hit even close to what it will take to be a successful writer or any other creative endeavor for that matter. Even if they spout something close to the truth, they will not really know how to use it.

So is it really persistent patient practice?

The truth is you have to practice and get your stuff out there. Practice and production are two separate ends bound by a process. You will need all three to actually make any career or skill shine.

How long will it take?

That depends on the factors you start with. Everyone has pieces for the solution, but we don’t all have all the same pieces. You might have more skill than I do in some area. I might have more experience in another. The difference between people is why it’s so hard to do exactly what someone else has done to succeed right off the bat. In fact unless you are just very lucky, you will not have enough of the exact combination of factors that lead to their success.

Don’t let anyone fool you even with the best of connections and plenty of money to back them, every writer still has to work through all the key work to get any where. You cannot buy your way into heaven. Since Gutenberg invented the press there have been thousands of vanity publishing businesses that come real close to making the claim that anyone can write an instant best seller.

A Writer Born

The truth is fledgling writers are going to have to write a lot and keep on writing over a long period of undetermined time to get enough skill, develop their mindset, allow enough to people see their stuff, receive enough of the right feedback to make the right improvements they need, and for the stars to align just right to become an overnight success. Persistent patient practice pays off every time.

Same Song Another Verse

Persistent patient practice not new really. Every profession has the same curve. Fireman to Writer we all must put in our dues. There is no other way. That is the real skill. You have to put in the work.

Where to Start

So what skill does a writer need to pay those dues? The big three that come to my mind are persistence, patience and practice. Those three skills are the start.

Persistence

I start with persistence. There are lots of terms describe this attribute from dogged determination to resilience to tenacity to even, my favorite term plain old stubborn.
 
All of those way of thinking are really about one thing. We are answering one question: When do I quit? We answer that with our mindset. Will we discipline ourselves to endure our challenge? Will we keep moving forward one step at a time with a definite plan in mind instead of just freaking out or being reactive?

Patience

Out of persistence we develop our patience. Bruce lee said that “Patience is concentrated strength.” He meant that to be patient was to actively work for a given destination.

True patience has little to do with taking things and moving on. That’s toughness. It is a useful attribute but in reality it is quite passive. Patience is engages the obstacles and breaks them down like water on a stone. Water is very patient.

Patience requires us to make a plan to act from if we want to create something great. As Dr. Alex Lickerman said in Psychology Today, patience is essential. ” It defends us against foolish, impulsive behavior, gives us time to consider our options carefully, plan appropriately, and execute effectively.”
 
With patience we create the self-confidence to win, come to recognize the goal is not crucial to be happy, as well as build the determination to take the next small step forward in our practice.

Practice

Our practice is the path itself. It is getting up at five am to pound out our pages. We make different choices with a practice. Instead of watching TV, we choose to sit down in the evening to go over our drafts. We choose to do some research at lunch or use our break times to learn how to use keywords better. A practice is the active application of both persistence and patience combined into a practice.

The Takeaway

The writer’s path is found in just three words. Persistent Patient Practice. From that point is where your path is found.

Going Slow Makes Mastery

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Finish Your Long Project In 11 Steps

Finish your long project and clear it out of the way. This is not one of those big leap things you can not do over night. It takes a commitment over a longer period of time so today I am looking at what we can do to get our longer term projects blog, larger 10k white paper or novel done over an ongoing basis.

The Long Term Game Plan for Finished Projects

Just 11 simple steps are all you need to get finish the project without going nuts.

1. Make your project a new habit.

Working from a habit perspective means you need to work regularly on the project. In general this is a daily thing, but you can also work from a five work day plan or a work around like three days a week. Working from a habit perspective allows us to work in manageable chunks and make progress to our goal or deadline without the stress of trying to pack too much work into too few hours of the day.

2. Setup your work space.

Give yourself the added help of a single space where you do your work. Do not spread your work around so that it can be done anywhere. When we try to fit our work in just anywhere we often windup getting the work done nowhere because we are constantly fighting distractions. Working at one place allows us to minimize distractions. We can remove or hide reminders of other projects, your 9 to 5 job and limit immediate access all the time of our kids and pets. Setting limits, especially for kids and pets will still allow them to run in just to ask a question or give you a hug but still allow you to get those words down with some focus and flow.

3. Tell others about your time and space.

This is for both accountability and distraction reasons. Tell people what your project’s requirements, hours and deadlines are. Bring them in as team members who are there to help you keep your hours consistent and free of distractions when working. Everyone who might be a distraction then becomes your helper instead of your source of frustration. Our team members also provide us with motivation to write and get done on time. Trust me. A kid asking you if you should be writing is an excellent reminder that can not only help you with your habit but also give your child an excellent roll modle to copy in their own lives.

4. Don’t be available.

Read that tag again. It is your new mantra if you just can not say no. You want all your friends, spouse, kids, neighbors, the people in the office, anyone who might interrupt you that in this time period you are not there for them. You will not be saying yes to anything. The answer for anything outside of broken bones or profuse bleeding is a big fat NO! Only 911 call type emergencies will qualify for an interruption. This means when they walk up you don’t talk to them. You focus. That focus is a finished project. It is a bit on you if you are a yes type personality, but that is what it will take to get the respect your time and space need when you have a big project.

5. Write rough first.

Don’t cheat by staring at a blank page. Put words down. Every minute counts and so does every word, whether you think it is right or not. Cleanup is for later. You need words to work with first. Get that idea down. Cover the page.
Make an agreement with yourself that your time on your work is for just writing. Don’t use it for anything else. You can treat your edit and rewrite times the same way too, but that’s for later. First you need that draft.

6. Get over yourself. Finish that Project.

Your perfectionist ego is going to kill you. You want a perfect draft but that is never going to happen. So get the words down. Forget perfect. Promise yourself it can be perfect after your final edit…when ever that is. For now let yourself be messy and imperfect.

For the pantsers out there, present yourself with a problem and write your way out of it. If you are a plotter type, you have your outline. Either way, you need something to focus your mind on when you sit down. Professional writers do not sit down to wait for inspiration. They sit down to write. With our without a map, they have a destination in mind.

The best advice I have seen on this is to write what the next step is for your work when you finish with a given step. This trick can be used for both your overall flow process as you move from idea creation, to draft to edit to rewrite to publish or it can be used in a given piece of work such as a scene or chapter in a book or the next article you have to write for your blog or client. However you choose to use it, write down your next step just after you get done with what you are doing. It’s that little review is a great way for your brain to cue up what needs to be worked on when you come back to the desk.

7. Focus.

Whatever project you are working on from blog posts to a book, keep your work flowing by keeping it the main focus of your work. That could be a novel you want to get done or it could be a build up on your blog or it could be getting more copy writing clients. Whatever you are working on, that is your main focus. Keep it mentally locked when you are working on it. Finishing your projects will not be all that hard then.

8. Write for a habit not just to Finish The Project

I have seen some argue for building writing habits by writing something. What you write does not matter. I agree that you can create a lock for yourself to write that way, but there are several bigger problems that come from that kind practice. The largest being that while you will get in the habit of writing in and of itself, you will also avoid the main project you really want to write on. The result will be you do not have the real results you want (say a book draft done) about six months down the road because you do not have the exact habits for the exact result you want. Your habits will be too generalized.

Solution is simple. If you want a book in a year, that is the focus of your practice time. In practice we create the exact kind of discipline we need to fit the results we want. We want to be a novelist, blogger or copywriter not a letter writer to great aunt Gertrude.

9. Trust your natural work flow Luke.

One of the more subtle habit traps is using another person’s word or page count. You already have a basic word count you can already do. For now that’s all you need. Over time the your words will increase as your skills improve, not to mention the muscles in your fingers get stronger. For now learn how much you can do in whatever reasonable time period and word count you can get done. Not only will it help make you more consistent, it will also give you an idea how much time you will need to realistically complete this project and the next one.

10. Take a break. Finishing your projects need one too.

Don’t try to type for hours on end. You will burn out on every level doing that and your project will grind to a halt. The best way is to take breaks about every thirty minutes or once an hour to rev up your physical and mental juices. Just five minutes every half hour away from the work is all it takes. Yes, that means take ten if you have got a good 50 minutes plus in.

Use those breaks to release some cortisol and move the blood about. Five minutes is time enough to pace a bit or do some burpees or a few yoga poses. You can also get a coffee refill and grab a snack. Anything is useful as long as it takes your mind off the work and lets you release some of the pressure.
 
In general the longer the work day you have, the more important it becomes for you to take breaks. There’s a reason in the public sector breaks have been fought for and won by unions. They work. Without a break any kind of work for hours at a go will grind you down. Your errors will increase. For a writer this will mean far more bad ideas than what we really want and a lot more time spent in edit and rewrite mode. Save yourself some frustration and take the breaks to finish your project. You will come back to the work with a new energy, better ideas and things will work out.

11. You need fun in the sun.

Schedule some fun time away from writing too. Whatever you find fun, do it. The work is a kind of reward, but you need some other kinds of fun too. Life is a balance. Take a hike. Play with the kids. Share some time with the spouse. Heck grab some popcorn and watch a movie. Some say all work and no play makes you dull, but for a writer dull really mean ugly manuscripts.

Parting shot

Self-discipline is not just about controlling your-self or getting your writing done. It is also about how your life is lived as a whole. Follow the steps, adapt them to meet your needs and live your life on the writer’s path. All you have to do is start.


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Writing Daily Habit to Discipline


 
Writing daily habit to discipline is a journey. The most common answer for developing a writer’s self-discipline can be distilled down write every day. It’s good advice as far as it goes. The trouble is getting that habit started, forming it into a practice and growing that into a discipline is a process that cannot be just gulped down in one bite. You are going to want to break this down a bit.

Where to start-know yourself and why

First thing to consider is what you want with your habit. The reality is you do not want to write every day. If you think about it what you want a book to publish or to have your blog posts up or add copy for a customer. Even then there is often more under that. he book you want because you have a great story you really want to share. The blog post is so that you can create a blog that is large enough to be your income source. The ad copy is to build your customer base and your copy business. There are thousands of reasons you want that habit. The first step is to know your own reasons.

Knowing your why is half the first step. The why you would avoid is the other side of the coin. If you know what road blocks your mind is kicking up in the way you have a far better chance of avoiding them down the road. Ask yourself what is holding you back. What are you afraid of?

The why you are building your writer’s discipline is going to be mighty useful as you move forward. Without it you are likely to quit when the going gets rough or your inner resistance starts up with all those objections, distractions or other assorted ways to avoid doing your work.

Take your time and create a rock hard reason to have this new habit. Ask yourself what will I get out of my new habit?

Use the why

As writers we are always working on new skills from how to put up a blog, to how to market on LinkedIn, to creating better pics for your blog, etc… Learning is part of the game, so building the discipline to do the homework is a big thing. Having a solid reason for it is a good first step.

The first step is to say it and then regularly remind yourself of that why. You are a writer. Write it down and put that somewhere you will see it every day. This can be at your writing space, on your fridge, your mirror, etc… Any place you look regularly.

The more places you have your reminder, the more often you will use your thoughts to act. Your thoughts will become who you are more instead of your emotions running the show.

Knowing the difference between a goal and commitment helps a lot too.

Be clear

The clearer you are about who you want to be and where you are now as well as why you want to create this new habit, the better you will be able to formulate your own strategies and mindset for becoming the kind of person who has those habits.

Many people see self-discipline only from the perspective to a means to controlling their behavior. That’s the direct path to the end game. But James Clear’s idea of “identity–based habits” offers a in interesting shift of the camera in Atomic Habits and his article here (and which he talks more about in Atomic Habits). Clear points out that, when we change who we are, we also change what we are doing. If we change who we see ourselves as we can more easily change our habits to match it.

Change what we see ourselves as

For instance say you are a TV junkie trying to get that blog off the ground. You have your writing plan in place and you are on day four of your new evening blog routine. Boom. Netflix just updated your favorite show, 26 episodes. No waiting.

Telling yourself that you can watch them any time is a valid call. The trouble comes from the self-denial focus, which given your much stronger Netflix junkie habit will likely lead you at some point down the road to a classic “What the hell.” moment.

You will kick that post to the curb and binge four episodes before the clock strikes midnight and go to bed with the promise of waking up early to get that post done before work still on your lips as you drift off.

Change the game


Now let’s change the game a bit. Instead of putting off to later, you say “I will have to schedule that one for next week.” I know it’s a slight difference, but a blogger is running a business. Business people schedule things in advance. You are locking yourself in by identifying more as a blogger than as a rabid Netflix junkie.

Psychologist tell us this works because humans have a tendency to act in ways we find to be consistent with how we see ourselves regardless of whether or not it makes any sense.

A lot of times this human influencing in technique can cause problems. For instance if you take a job as a reporter and you think all reporters smoke. However, flipping it on its head like this can help you master the very habits you need to be the person you really want to become.

Embrace pain

When we exercise our self-discipline we push out of the comfort zone, away from the choice of least resistance.

Discipline is a universal tool that when we build it in one area the skill transfers to others. That’s why when you work on your discipline as a writer, you can do other little things that will make your writing practice grow without writing. We are lucky for this. It takes a little of the stress off the need to write just to build the discipline to write.

More Ideas

Here’s a short list of other things to try. Just remember to give them some time to work their magic. Every time you work on being more disciplined you add another brick to your wall of discipline.

Become the Ice Man

Wim Hof is famous for his cold showers. Taking a cold shower for five minutes every day is a great way to both improve your body’s immune system and strengthen your discipline.

Take the stairs

Skipping the elevator habit works without doing anything special. You just remind yourself to walk that flight of stairs instead of ride up.

Do your errands on foot.
Pace during your breaks.
Read instead of watching a show.
Start a new class, early in the morning is a great.

If it costs cash, it might add some incentive to show up as well.

Movement, specifically movement that goes against an established habit, is another great tool to improve your discipline. What you choose is not point. What you want is to do something worthwhile that makes you a little bit uncomfortably every day.

Timers are good

I upped my own discipline by adding a timer to my writing times. My hook is that when the time is up, I have to get up and walk about for about five minutes. This way I fight my inner urge to keep on plugging words beyond the break period. That gets my body moving the blood about and I let my subconscious work on the piece without my conscious dictator adding even more for it to deal with.

My take

The thing to remember is that we develop our discipline all the time. A little mindful effort and we will find it easier to get those words down.

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Writers Mental Productivity Habits

Writers mental productivity habits are essential for developing as a writer. The first two me habits every writer needs are to write every day and to finish your work. If you happen to stop there, you will be light years ahead of what many people do.

Write and Finish

The biggest two problems I have ever faced in my own writing have been starting my projects and finishing them. I still have to be carful with thes two booby traps. I am not alone on this. Every writer that has ever lived or ever will live face these demons every day. They do not go away or quit. Worse, they get better and more subtal with time. We get better results because we learn that we can beat them. Knowing that we can win opens the door.

The way we beat them is how we get our brain to shift into the process. We learn habits to make ourselves mentally shift and perform on cue. There would be zero books to show us the way to do that if that were not the case. The most experienced writers will still feel the fear. The demarkation line between the two phases of a writer’s life is whether you know you can beat that anoying little voice in your head. Knowing that you can beat it means you will will fight as long as you stay in the game. That’s why we read those books. It’s a trip into another writer’s mind that opens a vast repository of informantion and instint in our minds. I think learning from other writers is one of those essential trips for every writer.

Writers’ Learn from Writers

Every writer has a stack of authors we rely on for getting through through the learning curves and the rough parts. Some of them are people we know and others are found in books. I have my list of favorte writers I learn from. At the top of my list are Steven Pressfield and Vincent van Gogh. Rudyard Kipling is a close third for the poem If. There is brilliance in his poetic brevity. These are my go to guys for a kick or a clue about what to do when I am stuck, shucking the work or even going over the top in of a flight of production free ego. They remind me of the basics and to keep looking for the nuances forward. The fun part is, when I think about it, I already had the answer. I just did not want to do it.

That’s what Pressfield calls resistance. The malevolent force in our heads that wants us to avoid doing the work we already know we need and want to do. Often it’s a case of I just want to see someone else say it. Then I can let my mind wrap itself around that particualar stumbling block and accept it. I get to that point and I am pounding the keys down the path. We all need that key shove, even the the big guys we are following.

The Third Mental Habit

The third best mental habit to focus on is build your confidence. The mental menace in your head that tells you that you can’t wears a black hat and shoots holes in your self-confidence. The message he sends is not that can’t but that you are not good enough. Same song different verse. A little louder. A little worse. Our weak confidence is often fostered by held over feeling from our school days when the teachers both eagerly awaited our efforts and willing read them while also slashing us over issues with spelling, punctuation, grammar, flow, etc… This can be sent packing by a basic daily practice of writing. See number one above. Often we find that just pounding out our word count and sending those words into the world is enough to build our confidence and send those insecurities in our heads running.

We tend to think from our insecurities. We see getting published, even on your own blog, as hard, if not impossible, work. The reams of accolades we desire fail to just appear before our eyes and all too quickly come to the conclusion that we are just lousy writers. This is just the subtal work of our insecurities. Reality is often different. We might need some work on our writing skills to be sure, but we can fix that by…you guessed it. Refer back to the first two habit skills. We need to realize that the market is saturated with lots of skilled writers and that just because we have not hit the number one slot on Amazon/NY Times, is not really an indication of our skill.

What we might see as a failure of our skills or tallent is often more proof that everyone has limited time to read, and that it takes time for you to build up enough writing that sees enough eyes to really make a mark. Last I checked it took a writer between 10 to 20 books in the market for them to make a steady income.

Writing Ice Berg Ahead

It may shock some people when they find out that this was true before the saturation of the internet too. Michaele Crichton wrote over a dozen before he had a hit with the Andromeda Strain.

Bloggers

A blogger takes two to three years of consistent regular posting to get massive traffic and page views. The average blogger will post two to three posts a week every week during that time. When they suddenly become ‘known” they will likely have written over 100 to 150 articles a year to get there. A blogger will also have to master marketing, product development, the basics of how to make and grow a working email list or other financial support system and a how to run the blog itsaelf. That is a big project. None of it is visible unless they tell you like
Gary Vaynerchuk.

Copywriters

A copywriter promotes and writes dozens of spec articles and pieces till they start to land regular clients. Even then it’s not the dollar a word club. They get hosed at two to ten cents a word. Still they are better off than the novelist. They get paid for their practice. It is more than just building a large portfolio. There is also work to build a network for getting work and closing deals in the mix. It takes time to build those skills. The reality is your first year or three will be in the $3000 to $1500 a year level. However, after your credentials and skills are in place most tend to make $75000 to $150000 a year. If you stay in the game long enough $300000 a year is not unheard of. Like all other writers, the ones we hear about are the high skill end.

Reporters

Reporter will be a cub for a few years just learning the beats. Depending on the paper that can mean working for pennies till they can really start to work on the main stories and have collumns of their own. The big draw there is the steady nature of both the weekly paycheck and the daily work. For a writer the daily writing with a deadline is far more valuable.

Dues Paid

We often call this paying your dues. What it is going on is not just doing time on a cosmic hamster wheel. You are building your confidence. Repetition builds your skills, habits, and most of all your confidence. When you know you can crack out a thousand finished words in an hour or two and submit them on time for your deadline, that’s confidence. It’s more than just just knowing how fast you are. You know how to allocate your time for the background work you will need for research, client interaction, editing, etc…. you will need to get those words down on paper in those two hours. Confidence shows up when the process of getting the work done is no longer a mystery. You know how to start, keep going and finish. That is a confident working writer.

Resilience is the mental skill writers fall back on in the process of getting things done, regularly in large scale volume. Resileince is a byproduct of our condidence to bounce back from failure. It is as much habit as skill. In Jujitsu we say “Fall six times. Get up seven.” As long as you get up just once more than you fall, then you win. It’s that simple. That’s what becoming resilient is all about.

How do you practice?

How do you practice falling? Write more and get more out there. It’s not fancy. Nor is it new. It is a commitment to the mundane. Often that is what all writing is. We, to turn a phrase from Chet Scott of Built to Lead, “marry the mundane”. It’s not a fairy tail. It’s repeating our baisic habits over an over to master ourselves and our lives so that we can bring life to our work.

In writing I have found that keeping a perspective about failure is essential for trying again. We all fail in writing. I cannot think of a single writer, well known or otherwise who has not had a list of failures that far outstrips the wins. If they can get up every time, so can I…and you too. It just takes a little practice…maybe a lot. That’s where the commitment hits. I bet you know where I am going on this one again. Yep, that’s where the daily writing and finishing your work are again in play.

Nothing out there is going to improve your ability to be resilient more than getting out there with a new work and let the bodies hit the floor. This is how we learn. Not just with writing, this works with everything. The problem I have found is that at those times where I have had the strongest resistance to get up was when I did not listen to my higher mind set or gird myself with the wisdom of those who have gone before me. It has always been hardest to get up when I listened to that quit voice we all have or just as bad listened to the crowd of naysayers we all have.

The fact is the reason our critics say such negative things is that they don’t have the guts to do what we are doing. They may say they hate you, but in truth they hate themselves and are taking it out on you because you remind them of how bad they are messing up.

Talk to Writers

Whenever you meet those who are really working to get better, they will not be so negative about you. That’s because they are too focused on killing that dragon inside themselves to waste time doing the same to you. They also know that if they give you some encouragement there’s a biofeedback loop that will come back to them. Some call it karma. Others see it as positive thinking or optimism. The name does not matter in the least. When we give positive feedback to others, we feed two souls for the price of one gift. The biggest trick for confidence I have found is to give others some first. Then use that new confidence and resilience to shore up the first two habits and grow the process. Just an idea, but you might find it works for you when you try it.

Last Thought

On the writer’s path we keep working on our habits as much as our writing skills. They are just as important. Maybe more so since our habits are what will build our writing skills the most. Along the way you will find other habits to add or drop as you move along. Go with the flow. Look for answers in the mundane. Build the process. Trust the work. Love what you create. Rinse. Repeat.

Writing Daily Habit to Discipline


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Writer Traits What are they?


Writer traits support every writer known. Without them very little if anything would be written. The most basic writer’s trait is that you write. If you want to be a better writer you write then re-write. If you want to go further to professional then you add in a professional mind set.

There are literally hundreds of traits for each phase along the path that writers travel in life. My experience is different from others but from where I stand now after having written and not written over the years these are the traits that come most to mind for every writer to at least consider adding if not growing in his skill base.

Kaizen

The Japanese have an excellent word for a process that Ford came up with over a century ago. Kaizen is the process of constantly improving what you are doing for the better. We are not talking change for its own sake, rather the work to make things and processes better. No system or method is perfect. Writers have to work to find the things that can be improved to make things work better.

Writers have many things to work on beyond the work itself. They also work to improve their own inner character traits to support and grow their practice, develop their thinking skills, become more resilient and adaptable, improve the systems by which they get things done, increase their contacts in the writing sphere, etc.. There is a lot of work that goes into being a writer, not all of it is just a simple scribble on a page. Taking the time to think about what you need to improve and what to do about it is a great trait for a writer.

Patience

We all get caught up with a lack of patience from time to time. No one likes becoming patient. We just like the advantages when we are. Writers’ labor in a craft that takes time for everything, including down time between drafts just to get the head cleared around things. Being patient is a key writer’s trait for coming back to a project or given point when you have given it the time for things to line up. Patience is the best friend you will have while you slog it through.

Long Haul Perspective

Looking down the road is one thing, but actually accepting it and the daily grind to get there is another. This is likely the one thing that kills so many writers time and again. We just cannot accept the realities of the road ahead. All writers want our work done and a nice paycheck. It is hard to accept that we are going to actually have to walk every step of the process to get there. Changing that mental reference changes the entire game.

When we understand the game is going to be long, we can do things other than try to sprint through things or just walk away. We can sit down and work out a plan and strategy for actually getting there. Our work becomes more focused. We become more resilient when we hit bumps, our current limits, time constraints and painful evaluations along the way. We learn new skills like how to break our projects down into planning, research, writing, editing, re-writing, and publishing or delivery phases. Accepting the full scale of the work, much of it far from the glory we have in our minds and much more painful, is a powerful comfort when the winter winds blow and your life everywhere goes off into the deep.

Only one shot

There is a constant I have seen in several of the disciplines I have learned from over the years. Be it water color painting, sword drawing, riflery or writing the key is always to let your focus go to just one point then keep it there till the work is done and let it go to move to the next. No thoughts of the future. No worries of the past. Just stay in this instant and do the work.

This is not to say you should keep pounding away on a project that is stumping you or is in need of a break to let things settle. There are times and jobs where the mission of the day is to just slog one boot in front of the other till the journey is done. You will need to break from them. That’s why so many writers have multiple projects going at any given time. From Isaac Asimov to Steven Pressfield, I have seen the successful writers recommend that when you are stumped with a given project, move to another project till the mist clears and you can hit it again.

Time–it’s important

You will not live forever. You are going to die. For the writer, or anyone else who wants to achieve something, there is no clearer message that your time is valuable. The thing is most people treat time as the least important thing on their list. The writer cannot think this way. You will not get back one second that you spend…ever. You have no idea how many you have left either. A writer must use their time wisely or find themselves at some point looking their body of work lacking to their own wishes.

The best treatment I have found for this lies in two facts. One is a commitment to write daily. The second is locked writing office hours. I have found that having a morning that includes a solid writing practice for my novels has provided the anchor I needed to keep me on the path and expand that path to include time for more professional work in other fields like blogging and copy writing. You do not have to write books. You can blog or provide blog content or any other kind of writing you wish. The key here is to anchor yourself and your time with a set schedule for your writing whatever that is.

Gotta be stubborn

The one luxury you can ill afford as a writer is to quit. You just cannot do that. No quit in you. That means getting back up every time you fall. When you start to grind down you turn ornery. You slog. Steven Pressfield says it best, “Stay stubborn.”

Be Hungry

Les Brown is famous for saying that “You gotta be hungry.” He’s right. Nothing replaces the fuel of being hungry when working to your goals. Hunger is great. It narrows your focus and clears the excesses from your mind. Hunger even lights the path you need to travel today. Things become very simple when you let your hunger do its thing.

Every trait in this list can be learned, practiced and grown over time. The first step is to choose to work on them and commit to the process, then start working through the hard questions like: How do I do that? Then answer it. If you can’t think of how you can do it now, research it. That’s what Google and the library are for. You will find some answers easy and others hard. Some you will love others you will hate. Deal with them as they come and most importantly, write.

If you liked that, try a look at what Thinking Clear can do for you.

Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash

Discipline Starts Habits like Sitting Down to Write. Move Your Project Forward

Discipline Starts Habits. Habits start your new article, a new chapter or any new project. Starting can be hard at times. While it is mostly comes down to a matter of habit that will get you into the chair, sometimes you need a few tricks to get working when you are still building the new habit or things have gotten in the way. Here are some of the tricks I have used to make my writing habit take root.

Setup

Set your computer to pull up your Notepad, One Note, Scribner, Word, Google docs, your blog’s word press page or whatever other program you use to write on startup. That simple hack helps your discipline start the habit with very little effort.
 
This seems like a simple idea but it is powerful, if you use it to start working first thing. The best part of this trick is that it makes starting a no brainier every time you turn on your machine. This one step change eliminates distractions like your email account, social media, or any other online distraction you can think of.
 
While I was first building a daily writing habit, I found it the only way to kill off other distraction for my time at the start of my work day.

Write

Plan a time to write every day. This is more for the long term, but writing should be a long term thing. Treat it like it is. Plan for it like any other long term thing in your life like say going to your job. The mind trick is to remember that writing is more of an endurance race than a quarter mile sprint. Learning what how the pros approach their practice is not a bad idea either. You might learn something.

Mindset activates discipline starts habits

Change your mindset. If you are letting your work go undone it is likely you have a mix of feelings over it. They can range from fear to frustration. Not one of those feelings is going to help you get words on the page. That’s not their job. They are here to stop you. You have to sit down to stop them in their tracks.
 
That means how you view writing is using the wrong mental habit set. Ask yourself a few questions about your process. How do you see your writing? Is it a side job? Do you see it as part time? Is it something that can be moved around or avoided just because you choose to? In short, do you see it as important?
 
Chances are you like to think of it as important, in fact so very important. The problem is you don’t really treat it like it is important. Don’t worry. You are not off the island. It just means you have to jump into our little old attitude adjustment chamber.

Attitude Adjustment Chamber

You need to treat your writing as you would your job. Nothing gets your pants in the chair like a job does. If you don’t show up, you pay for that. If you show up, you get paid for that. Writing works the same way.
 
Hold the phone. I can hear the rationalizations already. “But, I am a newb. I don’t make any money writing. It’s not like I will have to tell my mom have no money because you did not show up to write.”

I got news for you. You cannot eat with those rationalization checks either.
Plus you also get paid by the work itself. When we work we set up a positive biofeedback loop, much like what an athlete does for training. After a session in the pool, the swimmer feels like a different person than the one who jumped in for laps an hour ago.
 
This pay is big. Motivates you to do more and get better. Releases tension from the biofeed back loop. Builds pride in your work. Pays the dues that mark you as a member paid in full. It also cuts the dread and misery out of your life while giving you a runner’s high without breaking a sweat.
 
Every day you finish your work, you join a not so secret fraternity that gives you the same kind of privileges usually left for Marines’ esprit de corps, the martial artist’s inner calm while walking the marital way, or the mother with the new born in her arms.

Pay in Pages

Above all you are left with one more very important paycheck. Another day’s pages down and closer to a finished and published project that may one day mark you as immortal.

No work means more than just no cash today. It also means you will never publish, so your financial world will not change because of your writing. It means the pay you do get from the positive biofeedback you get from the work itself does not show up either. Say good bye to the motivation you need to change the first pay problem while you get to feel miserable in so many other ways too.
 
We get paid by the work itself. Word for word. Pound for pound.verything you put in comes back to you in full. Even if no one else on the planet knows it, you get paid. Do the work. (Thank you Steven Pressfield for that little mantra gem.)

In Advance

Plan ahead. A writing cue stops the stall. Half the time we sit down and do not write. We suffer before the blank page staring back at us. The dang thing is defiant, even aggressive so it seems at time. You look and look. Nothing comes to mind.
 
One of the more professional tricks is to know now in advance what you are going to write on. This is nothing new. News papers have paid City editors for decades to come up with article ideas and plan for when and where to use them so the reporters do not have to do the hard work.
 
Many professional writers have used planning tools like the writing machine, the beat sheet, the foolscap method, and so on to crack out longer works like white papers, novels, plays, movie scripts and non- fiction books. Having a cue for what you are going to write helps end those questions of what to write. You have the clothes line done. Now sit and do the work of filling in the gaps.

Practice First

Practice the habit before you try to take it seriously. This seems to be a lesson many people never take seriously. In fact they discount it so much that they often never do it, yet it is a vital step in the process.         
 
Every serious professional out there has spent time practicing their work. In the Marines we practiced those habits we would need in combat or to support that effort. On the dojo floor I practiced the skills I would need to walk the path of a Karnataka and swords man. Practice of skills is important, but you need to focus on the habit of those skills to make them automatic.
 
No Karatika or Marine would advise anyone to step into a fight without first having practiced enough to make the skills an automatic habit. The same advice is true in writing.
 
I have not always followed that advice for my own writing path. I spent years…couple of decades really, ignoring this key habit. It literally sat there before my eyes till I started to actually work on my habits directly. Then it hit me like a Seattle flying fish down at Pikes Street Market. How could I have missed this?

Be Resillient

The one thing that all humans are is resilient. We adapt and over come. Trust that inate ablity. You still might stall out because you are not ready to write the piece. You will only be ready when the work is done. So do exactly what our ancestors did to become top dog on this planet, adapt. You get ready by doing the work. Do the work. Look at the results. Adapt. Repeat.

Write Crapy

One of the hang ups I have seen in myself from time to time is that I want the work to be perfect. That’s not a bad thing, but no one, I mean no one writes perfect on the first go.
 
Even the stories around greats like Jack London prove this. London cracked out his immortal tale ‘Call of the Wild’ while stuck in Alaska over a few weeks. The manuscript was so perfect his editors could not really edit anything.
 
The fact remains that the editors saw the final copy London shipped to them, after he had fixed things. The first drat stuff stunk in places, was lost in others and was nothing short of a cry for help far more often than not. So what? It was a rough draft. It was supposed to stink.
 
Your first draft will too. Crack it out knowing it will be bad anyway. In fact give yourself permission to write as crappy as you can. You can and will re-write it later. It will get better. Your first step though is you to have the puzzle you are trying to figure out laid out with the sides all in place.

Parting Thoughts

Try a few of these. If they don’t work for you, don’t worry. They might not be the habits for you. There are plenty more. Just look for the habits that are blocking your way or just not there at all. Ask yourself what you need. Use that self-understanding to find the habits that will work for you. You just have to keep the one key habit of them all…be Resilient if you want to be self-disciplined. Be disciplined if you want to start your habit.

Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash