We all know that if you want to be a successful writer you need to write. Not just occasionally, but every day, without fail, whether you feel like it or not.
You hear about writing habits and ways to set them up. You've visualized yourself as a writer. You've done your affirmations. You've listened to stories about all the 'greats' and their daily writing process. Yet whatever you do, you just seem to keep missing days off your daily writing, and you're starting to think you might not be cut out to be a writer...
When it comes down to it though, there are ONLY three reasons you're not writing that 1,000 words every day that would change your writing career.
- You don't manage to sit down to write
- You have the "butt in seat" problem solved, but you just don't get the words on the page
- You have the "butt in seat" problem solved, you get some words on the page, but you don't manage 1,000 words every day
It's simple when you think about it, but if you solve those three issues, you'll regularly end up with 1,000 words every day, no matter what.
While the big picture is simple, these three reasons have a variety of causes and disguises, each caused by a mindset issue. So let's look at the different causes...
1. You Don't Manage to Sit Down to Write
There are a variety of causes for not actually getting your butt in a seat so you have a chance to write. A common solution is to set up a daily writing habit, however, there's a step that needs to come before that, that a habit just won't solve. It comes down to your priorities and desires.
Is Writing One Of Your Top Five Priorities?
There are only so many things you can focus on at one time. The conscious mind can only deal with seven plus or minus two pieces of information at any one time. Taking the lowest common denominator you end up with five. Warren Buffet's goal process also says it's five things. Given his level of success, and the way the conscious mind works, I'm inclined to agree.
There are only so many things you can focus on at one time. The conscious mind can only deal with seven plus or minus two pieces of information at any one time. Taking the lowest common denominator you end up with five. Warren Buffet's goal process also says it's five things. Given his level of success, and the way the conscious mind works, I'm inclined to agree.
What this means is that you can only have five things in your life at any one time that you are consciously wanting to work on. Maybe you have a job to focus on so you earn a living until you can branch out full time, a family that needs looking after and you want to improve your health by exercising every day. That's 3 things.
What else is going on in your life and what goals are you trying to achieve? If writing doesn't come in those top five items, this will stop you from setting up your daily writing habit however hard you try because you have five other more important things (to you) that will take your focus away.
So the first step is to work out what those five items are for you. It's a simple process, just write out all the things you want to achieve in the next twelve months. Order them in order of importance and see where your writing actually lies on your list priorities.
If it's not in the top five, you have some decisions to make. Either you have to put the writing dream aside until you've achieved those other five goals, or you have to choose which of the other goals you'll put aside to make room for the writing.
While this is simple, I didn't say it would be easy...
Is Your Reason Why Enough?
If you're struggling with motivating yourself to get your butt in a seat or you want to work out how to move that writing goal up into your top five items. Then you'll need to have a really strong reason 'why' you want to write. What's your reason?
Why did you decide you wanted to be a writer? What about being a writer is important to you?
- Is it because you might be able to quit your job and start being your own boss?
- Is it because you want to leave a legacy behind of everything you've learned so others can learn from it?
- Is it because it's a bucket list item? You're not quite sure how it got there, but now it is you'd like to write a book...
- Or is it because you love writing and can think of no better way to spend your day?
Whatever that reason why is for you, you need to write it out.
Now look at your reason. Imagine the kids are screaming, your partner has to work over time and the in-laws are coming to visit. How does that "why" look now? Still strong enough to make you want to write? If not, you need to rewrite it.
I can't imagine not writing, especially writing a book. Whatever is going on, it's the biggest thing I look forward to each day and part of that is because of my 'why' statement. So you need to make your 'why' rock solid and something that will keep you going no matter what chaos is going on around you.
Are You Relying On Willpower To Get You There?
A second reason you might be missing out on getting your butt into a seat is that you're relying on your willpower, instead of the power of a habit to get you there.
Willpower has been proved by research studies to be an exhaustible resource. What this means is that you have more of it in the morning, and by the time you've made a bunch of decisions through the day you have less of it in the evening.
It's one of the reasons Steve Jobs chose to wear identical clothes every day. It was one less decision he had to make, so one less thing used up his willpower every morning. It's also why people recommend you write in the mornings.
Developing a Writing Habit
The way to solve this one is to put in place that infamous writing habit. Follow the habit creation method from BJ Fogg, where you define a trigger that signals you to begin the habit.
You can use your alarm clock in the morning, or the act of brushing your teeth for instance. Anything you do on a daily basis without fail. This trigger then tells your brain to start the action, which is the second item that makes up a habit. You can define your action as something like "sit down at my desk to write".
Then finally you have the reward part of the habit. This is what you get for completing the action and only when you complete the action. Use something that you would really like and enjoy and you'll miss if you don't get it. Something like, you get to check off your daily goal, or you get to go to Starbucks for a cup of coffee.
So your habit looks something like this: Â "When I've finished brushing my teeth in the morning, I will go immediately to my desk and sit down to write 1,000 words. Once I've finished I can update my goal spreadsheet and put a check next to my daily writing goal."
2. You Don't Put Words On The Page
The second issue is where you manage to put your butt in a seat without too much trouble, but that's where it ends. No matter what you try, you just don't consistently get words out onto the page. Like the other issue, this one has a variety of causes as well.
You Get Sidelined By Distractions
Everyone has experienced the social media black hole. You just think you'll research one quick thing and the next thing you know, an hour has gone by and you've checked what all your friends are doing, read about some gossip, watching a cute animal video and managed to write zero words on your page.
To really get those words down so you progress your writing, you need to cut out all distractions before they happen. Close down social media, email, skype and anything else that pings you if someone does something. Put your cell phone into airplane mode and if you have one shut the door.
Your writing time has to be under your control, not someone else's, or worse yet, someone else's business. So before you leave your desk the night before, shut all the distractions down and don't reopen them until you've finished your writing.
I put a disclaimer on all my personal email so anyone who emails me knows they're not going to get an immediate response. I check it twice a day and that's pretty much it.
Writer's Block
Everyone has heard of writer's block. You've consistently got your butt in the seat, but when you sit down to write, that blank page leaves you at a loss for words.
One of the best ways I've found to solve it is to plan your outline. Whether you're writing a 100,000-word book, or a 300-word blog post, an outline of what you want to cover and what points you want to make removes that blank page, blank mind issue.
You want to break your whole project down into manageable steps that you can form into an outline. Then start to fill in the sections with all the points you want to make. Lastly, when you come to write, pick a section and start writing around the points you've already described. With that outline, you always know what you're going to write about and you never have to see another blank page.
3. You Don't Put 1,000 Words On The Page Consistently
Part of this will be solved by having a daily habit because that means you'll be writing some words. However when it comes to consistently writing 1,000 words every day, you have to know precisely how many words you do write each day to keep hitting your goal.
Failure To Measure
As Peter Drucker said, "What's measured, improves." The same is true for your writing.
You can't hope to consistently write over a certain word limit if you're unaware of exactly how many words you write day to day. So you want to measure your daily word count. This allows you to track your progress and improve it at any point if you want to write more words each day.
So What's Stopping You?
If you solve the issue you're facing 1,000 words every day is in your future as a writer. The question is, "Which of the three issues do you face and what's the cause behind it?" Let us know in the comments below which one you struggle with and what you're committing to so you can solve it.
2 thoughts on “The ONLY 3 Reasons You're Failing To Write 1,000 Words Every Day”
Thank you Karen for these great ideas.
I'm going to create an Excel sheet and write out what my guitar playing goals are...I have written some notes and have my dream cover song lists made out but no goal sheet in Excel. I love this idea.
I'm going to use these ideas to get more guitar playing in every day. One great thing about playing the guitar is that I also can do it standing it up and have my music stand set up so it's at my head level when I stand and play. I sometimes sit on my couch and play also. The point is however that every night when I get home from my office job, I play my guitar. Just like with the ideas in this article about getting your writing done if you want to be a writer, just do it. My trigger for playing is to eat dinner and listen to 30 minutes of one of my favorite podcasts. After that I play. I promise myself that I need to play for 15 minutes a night at minimum. What ends up happening however is I play for 20 to 30 minutes and then take a break for 10 or so and then I feel the itch to play for another 30 minutes. If I ever feel it's a drag to play because I'd rather be on Facebook then I play for the 15 minutes and get it out of the way and get back on Facebook. Most nights I end up playing and practicing something on my guitar for an hour total and some nights it ends up being 2 hours of playing time. I'm sure I'm going learn the cover songs I want to learn and I'm going to create more of my own musical ideas if I keep this up!
That's awesome Patrick! So glad this helped you 🙂 Look forward to hearing how much you get done and what a difference it made
Comments are closed.