Writing Habits

Not every day. Of course when you are a pantser, it is quite a challenge the longer the story
is to keep it moving in the direction you intend it to go in. A good week, I can write maybe
2-4 days out of it. Though I have gone as long as a month before writing again.
So it just depends on your writing preferences, and how it works in conjunction with your
life at a given point in time. Some can write every day, some can't.

Invent a time machine, or become immortal to compensate for not being able to write everyday.
Though a lady in my local writing group kinda forces herself to write everyday, to make it just
a part of her daily routine.

 

500 words a day, if possible 1000. Every day if possible barring no overtime or other responsibilities that may suddenly interfere.

To avoid burn out, i read another book or study on other options. If i struggle with something, i work somewhere else. The momentum remains but the focus is still there, somewhere.

 

My goal is at least one new scene, completed to a moderate polish, every two days. If I get to the third day without creating something new, I lose energy.

 

Fiction? No.

Non-fiction? Yes.

To keep going just make it a habit. Start a journal, write something online everyday (that is what I do.) The more you write the more practice you get in and the more you can try out different styles and mediums of writing.

I would suggest you sit down and write an essay titled "How to keep momentum when writing." You no doubt already know what to do you've just never bothered to write it down and explain it to yourself. If you don't explain it to yourself and understand why you should do it and how best to put it into action then you'll remain treading water forever and asking for constant advice.

Ask yourself, and answer yourself in writing. Once you've done that then look for flaws and then keep asking. Obviously I am not suggesting you don't ask for advice at all, only that you bring to the table a problem you've actively thought about and already tried to explicate in detail to yourself. That way you'll get more detailed responses and not waste too much time going over ground you've likely already covered.

note: That is part of my writing done for the day

 

You're joking, right?

 

No, I was deadly serious.

 

Is it just me, or are people getting a bit more snarky and almost talking down to other posters? I start threads for discussions. I like talking to the other members. And I am trying to do my part to keep the forum active because I think it is a great resource for writers. No one said you had to be a part of it, but, of course, you're welcome. If you could be a little less condescending and rude to me, that would be great. Thanks.

 

I was neither attempting to be rude nor condescending. I was offering an option to those who find themselves stuck. My advice is to write and articulate the problem, to explore it and write it down. Often writing out everything you can about a problem allows to to resolve many of the problems and/or establish a paln to resolve it.

This technique has helped me personally quite a lot. I have become more productive and allowed my creativity to flow much better by doing what I suggested above.

 

I fail to see what was snarky or condescending about Badger's post, honestly.

 

I try, but it's usually only every 1-in-3 days that I get anything done. I'm trying to be better with that, but life can be the worst writer's block.
Also, yeah, I don't see anything snarky or condescending about Badger's post either.

 

I write or revise every day of the year. Even during holidays I get in some writing at night. Right now I'm a part-time student, but even when I was working I wrote before and after work. Some might call that an obsession, and maybe it is. It's a passion anyway.

The momentum kinda happens by itself: At the beginning of a project I get a lot of ideas and write like crazy. The more I write of the story, the more invested I get, and that brings about the momentum to push through to the end. Not everyone likes the full-throttle style, but momentum is really important to me. I use brackets within the text to note down ideas that pops up instead of writing them down somewhere else, because even opening another document can break the momentum. I also keep most of the stuff in my head because the drafting is a fast process for me, so I mostly bracket the fun ideas I'm afraid of forgetting. When the steam goes down, that's when I head over to the outline doc and fill it out, and make some notes, or look over what I already written, which often gives me new ideas and the steam returns again.

I don't seem to get burnt out very often. A lot of other stuff makes me tired, but never writing. It's too much fun.

 

I go through periods where I write every day, but most of the time I don't. For me writing is something that I balance with all my day to day responsibilities (day job, family, house, etc.) and other interests, which means that I get less words on the page but am a happier person for it. For example, I've taken a break from writing entirely while editing Gravity, and am taking all of this week and the next week off from working on anything related to writing for the holidays. It really depends on what I've got on my plate and how best for me personally to prioritize those things.

 

These past (soon) three months I've written almost every day.

I've had periods where I didn't write for weeks or months, but now I try to write a least a few words every day too keep the habit going.

 

I do something to move my WIP (a novel) forward every day. The goal is always to write, but I do burn out...usually after writing something emotional, or like recently, when I wrote exhausting twin aunts who took a lot of energy to write. (ETA: I'm dyslexic.) So on those days, I research, edit, organize my research notes, write potential promo and marketing ideas for the book in case I self-publish...anything to keep forward motion going. ETA: I am not the kind of writer who enjoys the actual writing part. In fact I'll do anything to avoid it, so the forward motion is a must for me. I like the feeling of the end result (when it works).

I started the novel in August, and other than flying days, have taken two days off. That said, I'm happily single, have very few relatives, and my friends are all in creative fields, so we're understanding when one of us has to drop out out of sight for a while.

 

I can absolutely see how it could be read that way, but I don't think that was the intent.

 

When I'm writing a short then yes. How much? Depends on the difficult of the short and how fleshed out it is in my head already; I'm a pantser during writing a short who pants's as soon as the planning process is over.

When I'm not writing a short? I'm editing and planning, so I do get words down, though I never bothered to keep track of how much. It's difficult to get an exact number because I'm always cutting things and inserting new stuff.

But the general answer is yes, I do write every single day (barring family visits or when I'm just too exhausted, which happens on and off).

 

Telling me I need to bring something to the table when I post is really not very nice, especially when so many of you know I try to be an active member. But if my posting isn't wanted around here, that's fine. I'll just go write or something.

@badgerjelly ans @big soft moose maybe you should be nicer or think about what you're saying to someone you obviously don't know. I was never trying to control anything, but I certainly wouldn't try to school a member on how to post who had been around as long as I have. I don't know.

 

I'm not seeing this thread as a "look it up yourself!" topic that should be suppressed until more research is done. I think it's an interesting topic, and even though I'm not going to the trouble of actually looking them all up, my vague recollection is that @deadrats ' recent threads have tended to be interesting topics. (Edited to add: Does that imply that his older threads haven't? That's not what I mean. Just that I don't remember very far in the past.)

There are some forums where running lean and strictly minimizing the number of posts and threads is a worthy goal. IMO, this is not one of them.

 

If you find this topic uninteresting, you are totally, totally allowed to not read it. That's a thing.

Rudeness also seems to be a thing for you. Maybe you could practice that in private.

(Edited to note that, yes, the post I'm quoting is an occasion for the Report button, not the Reply button. I will try to use the correct button next time.)

 

Jesus, dude.

 

I write every day except for Thursday and Friday. Like any type of work, you need the "weekends." For my writing life, Th and F are my weekends, which I spend with my husband, family and friends.

I'd also agree with @badgerjelly regarding journalling and asking a question to yourself and answering it yourself. I do this every day for four minutes, before I write on my manuscript. It's also a method that programmers use when a piece of code is being buggy; they call it rubber duck debugging.

 

Another thing would be to write complete trash. Don't expect everything, or anything, you write to be good let alone great. Some days you'll write a lot of great stuff and others days you'll write stuff fit for the bin.

I write everyday almost without fail. It is mainly non-fiction though and the subject matter takes more time than writing fiction (for reasons of how I go about it.) Fiction is not my main priority at the moment, but when I was committing time to fiction I used to make sure I wrote 100 words a day at least, or just something. Occasionally I would write 1000-2000 words, and the 100 words or so I squeezed out on drier days generally helped me feel around my ideas and allow me to write more at a later date.

Setting goals too. I am currently writing an essay about making the perfect schedule, an essay on how to take note, an essay on how to write essays and an essay on how to read and write fiction - I have no intention of making them public they are purely for personal use in helping me develop my writing and organizing my time so I can be more productive. I am a creative and open person so I don't really have a problem with ideas, its more a question of planning and choice for me.

Writing is a very broad field. If you're stuck writing your novel write something different; try poetry or script writing, study the development of the English language, challenge yourself more academically in order to broaden your horizons and give greater scope to your own creative limitations.

 

I do write everyday, but not always prose. I like to write poetry, lyrics and journal entries. If not writing, then editing. Today I read over some lyrics I wrote, cringed for a good while, and then made necessary changes. It's not exactly writing something new, but it helps to keep writing in my life.

Keeping a morning journal would be a good practice. Writing three pages every morning as soon as you wake up is a good way of detoxing your brain. It could also work as a dream journal. I'm way too lazy and sluggish in the mornings to do it, but maybe it would work for you.

 

I don't even try to word every day. I brainstorm everyday, try to figure things out, but actually writing? Nope