Welcome to the Get Your Writing Done podcast. I'm Trevor Thrall, author of the 12-week year for writers.
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Have you ever had one of those periods where you just couldn't write consistently?
Maybe your schedule was too chaotic? Maybe you got super busy at work?
maybe you found yourself looking at the clock and seeing it was time to write but
you wound up finding something else to do. Maybe you were on vacation before that
you've been going great guns but when you came back you found that your
momentum was gone and you never quite got it back or maybe you made plans to
get to work early every morning and write for an hour before work but after a
couple of days you stopped and didn't start again. If any of these sound
familiar, do not feel bad. We all have trouble showing up. In fact, I think being a consistent writer, building a routine that sticks is one of the single biggest challenges facing most writers, especially having a routine that can stand the challenges, the turbulence of daily living. So today's episode is all about showing up, why we don't, and what we can do about it. By the end of the show, you'll have strategies to help you show up and write more consistently.
There are probably a million reasons people
have trouble showing up to write.
But from my experience, I think there
are a handful of very common, very powerful reasons.
And sadly, they're not mutually exclusive.
So I think you can get hit by two or more of them at the same time, which obviously would make it even more difficult to show up
And I'm not gonna pretend any comprehensive list here, but here are what I think are five
Very common reasons that people have trouble showing up
First people are busy
You know life is crazy kids a new kid
Relationship stuff work stuff school stuff trying to balance all of these things, but also do some writing
You know for me when I was an academic the school year was a crazy busy time and then when I got home
It was even busier because we had three little kids
So busy was the watchword for a long time. It's always something else taking up the time when I wanted to be writing
Second reason that people don't show up is burnout
You know, it's hard to write when you're burned out and sometimes you get burned out from being busy
and you just don't have anything left.
But you can even be burned out when things are going great with your writing.
This happened to me when I was writing the 12-week year for writers.
I was going great guns, I was getting close to done in fact, and after the holidays I
had sort of been writing right up as close to the holidays as I could and tried to jump
back as soon after the holidays as I could and early January I hit a wall.
I sat down at the computer and nothing happened.
I was like, wow, that is a wall there, just done.
And I just, I need to take like four days,
five days I can't remember how many, doing nothing.
No writing at all.
I was burned out.
And obviously people can get burned out
even worse than that.
So burnout.
Being disorganized, as cheesy as that sounds,
is another really big reason, right?
People, if you are busy, if you do have a lot going on,
you know writing doesn't just happen nobody's gonna make you do it and if you
don't have a process for getting your stuff together it's easy for the
writing not to happen so disorganize this was me in a you know the early form
of myself was disorganization was probably number one on the list a fourth
really really big reason that people don't show up is fear emotions and fear
There are so many reasons to be afraid when we write, and I don't care what kind of writer you are.
Afraid to let your first novel go out and get trashed publicly.
Afraid to send a journal article back that got rejected once already, or twice, or three times, or it's been rejected five times.
I've been there. I know many people who have been there.
Trying to send that out for a sixth rejection? I don't want to go work on that piece. That's hard, right?
There are many reasons we can be afraid of doing the writing of the next thing
we're doing. I'll tell you a quick story. I had two students way back when,
master students, and they both got to the point where they were writing their
thesis and one of them was so stressed out by the process of writing this
thesis she was so worried about how it was going to go and whether she would get
it done and pass, she lost her voice. And she had trouble finishing as quickly as she
would have liked because it was just so stressful. She had to stop from time to time. Another
student of mine, his computer was in the basement of his house that he worked on the thesis
on. And eventually he got so unhappy and freaked out about it that he stopped going to the
basement. The whole basement was off limits because that's where the computer with
the thesis on it was. And he just took him a long time to get over that fear,
getting the basement and get it done. So fear is a big barrier to showing up. And
then another one is sort of low motivation. And this comes in a bunch of
flavors, but you know, you've lost your mojo, you're not as interested in the
project, you're kind of bored with it, maybe you've done it a bunch of times, you know,
you're writing a newsletter or blog or you're writing your umptium journal article about
the same topic or another op-ed or you know the seventh volume in a series and the characters
all seem like retreads to you at this point whatever it is.
Low motivation can also come with a low lack of commitment.
It's something you said you'd write but you don't really feel it and it's hard to show
up and bother right so that's another possible reason.
Now I think I've had all of these and I bet they sound pretty familiar to you too.
And you know, I don't know, frankly I don't think I know a single writer who hasn't dealt
with at least most of these.
But I'm now going to make a bold claim.
On the surface these sound like they are very different causes of not showing up.
However, I believe they can all be treated with the same medicine, and that is a well-designed
weekly writing routine.
We often make it harder than necessary to show up by being non-strategic about our writing.
And by this, I mean that we often assume that writers can just write under any circumstances.
So we don't spend any time thinking about how to make sure our environment, our lives,
and our writing sessions are structured
in a way to make things work.
If we're busy, we just assume
we should be able to keep writing anyway.
You know, if we're a writer, we shouldn't burn out.
If we're a writer, we shouldn't have problems with motivation.
For a writer, we're not afraid to write
'cause I'm a writer, I write.
And so with that mindset, we don't realize
that when we face these issues,
the necessary response isn't just to say you're a writer,
it's actually to do something.
Show me any productive writer
with a strong writing routine.
And I'll show you someone who has a strategy for showing up.
They don't just say, I'll write.
There's a strategy underneath that.
They have taken great pains to make showing up easier,
to make it more enjoyable, to make it more productive,
to make it more rewarding.
Some of these things they've done
will be visible to an outside observer, that is you.
Like I write first thing in the morning
before the children get up.
You hear that one a lot.
But other things are not going to be so obvious.
For example, the preparation they did the night before to make their writing flow more
easily during today's session.
You might not see that.
Taking together all the stuff these folks are doing comprise what I call their weekly
writing routine.
This routine that keeps them showing up consistently day in, day out, week in, week out, year in,
year out.
And so, you know, the inquiring mind at this point is going to say, "Drevor, how can this
be?
issues all seem to be very different, have different causes, how can there be a single solution?
That doesn't make any sense. Well, that's an excellent question, my friends. The answer is that
a well-designed weekly writing routine is not actually a single solution, but it's a single
theory or framework for structuring our lives and our writing in order to make writing easier,
more enjoyable, more productive, and more rewarding. That means when you come to me and say, "Trev,
I'm having trouble showing up and I think it's because of X or Y.
I'm going to respond, "Okay, let's take a look at your weekly writing routine
and think about how we can redesign it to reduce or eliminate the impact of X or Y."
I'm convinced that creating a strong and personal weekly writing routine is at the core of being a
productive and happy writer for the long haul. I'm so positive about this that it's actually the
topic of my next book, which is not a secret if you've been following me for a while, and
I'm happy to say I'm getting close to the finish line.
The book is currently codamed the Weekly Writing Routine, Workbook, or something equally uncreative
depending on the day.
My goal is to help people think hard about their current routine, or lack thereof, and
to design a new routine that works better for them that makes their writing easier, more
enjoyable, more productive, and more rewarding.
I sound like a broken record, but I want your head in the right space.
I'm not going to do an overview of the book today.
Instead, I'm going to try to change the way you think about writing.
And then I'm going to outline a few strategic concepts that you can use to show up more consistently.
Bold words.
Alright, first up, let's change how you think about writing.
Maybe a big grandiose, but we'll see.
So most people think writing is just a thing you do.
which I mean it's like a concrete a singular action you're either writing
or you're not writing now by extension that means that making the decision to
write on a Tuesday for example or to not write on that Tuesday is a decision
about taking or you know we're not taking a singular action and that that
decision is then seen to be influenced only by more or less whatever's
happening at that very moment like I'm sitting here on Tuesday I'm trying to
decide not to write or not, I don't feel like it.
And so that would be the description of that process.
I am not writing because on Tuesday I didn't feel like it.
This is a terrible depiction of reality.
This is not how it works at all.
Instead, I submit, writing is a process with a before, during, and after.
And this has two really important implications.
It means that when you decide to head out the door to the coffee shop to write on a Tuesday,
that decision is influenced not only by what's happening at that moment on Tuesday, but by
decisions and actions you made and took long before.
If you make certain decisions today, you'll write tomorrow or the next day.
If you make others, you won't.
The second important thing it means is that your strategic options for improving your
showing up are actually much wider and diverse than you may have thought.
A lot of writers seem to think that showing up is mostly just a matter of staring the
resistance in the face and manning up, being a pro, exerting your will power.
Just do it like Nike says.
And this is what you get as a result of this binary thinking.
Writing is an on/off switch.
And so people are just looking for the on/off switch.
Just do it.
As if the opposite, only other possible responses, just don't do it.
Is that really the way the world works?
You either just do it or you just don't do it?
No, that's ridiculous.
Writing is a process with a before, a during, and an after.
And that means that there are things you can do before the actual words start getting
written that make them writing more likely to happen. That means that there
are things you can do during a session to make it more likely that writing will
happen and happen the next time. And it means that there are things you can do
after your writing session that make it more likely that you'll show up to write
next time. I think just even saying it out loud like this makes it pretty
obvious that there are gonna be a lot of strategies for showing up and getting a
right writing done thinking of it this way compared to the old mindset of
you're either writing or you're not writing.
It's hard to kind of get creative.
Well, what are you gonna do to write?
Well, just write.
That's not much there.
Now, I'm not trying to slander anybody with this.
I'm not some genius who was born thinking this way.
I had the old mindset of writing as a singular action,
do it, don't do it, for a very long time myself.
And it wasn't just with writing.
It was with a lot of things.
Instead of seeing things as existing on a spectrum
and being the result of a process,
I saw a lot of things as binary yes/no, on/off sorts of things, running, which I didn't
do for a long time, lifting weights, homework, especially homework, all sorts of things,
especially difficult things, right?
At various points in my past, I thought my failure to do these things was pretty much
just down to my lack of willpower, my lack of character, my lack of just do-it-ness,
whatever the hell that is, right?
But eventually, I began to realize that all of these things, especially even the difficult
ones, were things that just required a new way of thinking.
None of them were binary.
All of them were a process.
And all of them could be made more doable with a little strategic thinking about that
process.
And so that's the thinking, that's the approach that underlies the process of creating a weekly
writing routine that I outlined in the book.
I wanted to unpack the writing process and to explore it in a systematic way in order
to customize routine that will help make the process of writing easier, more enjoyable,
more productive, and more rewarding.
Now that we've paradigm shifted, let's talk about how thinking of writing as a process
with a before, during, and after can actually help you show up more consistently.
One of the great things, I'm an academic by training, so I still kind of think fondly
back to the courses where I had the earthquake courses, the aha courses, where you took this
course and for me it was intro econ, intro sociology, intro to political science, a
few others, where you're like, "I cannot look at the world the same way again.
This has shattered my entire way of thinking."
I had no idea this stuff was going on.
Like, who's been keeping this from me?
And the great thing about having that kind of paradigm
shifting moment is that it's very easy to then turn the
paradigm to a new area and just start--
the juices are flowing.
Because now that I've identified this simple but I
think powerful concept that writing has a before,
during, and after, I could probably just end the podcast
here by asking you three questions.
First, what sorts of things do you think you could do
before you start writing that would make it more likely
you'll show up and be productive?
Second, what sorts of things could you
do during your writing session to make it more likely you
will write and be productive?
And third, and I think you see where I'm going here,
what sorts of things could you do after your writing session
to make it more likely you will show up the next time
and be productive?
And I think you would probably take these questions
and run with them a long way.
And you should.
Go for it.
But since I've been thinking about these things a while,
let me throw some thoughts your way to start you thinking
about what I think some of the best general before,
during, and after strategies look like.
And again, one of the other key elements here of the book
and that I wanna stress here is that these strategies
have to be personal.
Personal not just to your own obstacles and barriers
for showing up, whatever is the hard part
about showing up for you,
but you personally the person.
what is going to work for one person to overcome a barrier
is not going to help a different person
overcome that same kind of barrier.
We're all so different as writers, as people,
that the way to overcome these things
is going to be a very personal thing.
That said, there are patterns to these things.
None of us is such a unique snowflake
that your solutions are going to look totally different
from anyone else on planet Earth's.
So as it happens, I think the general strategy
I'm going to outline for you here
are things that help a lot of people
the detail on how you do it, that's going to be the special sauce you need to add.
But I hope by outlining some of these things I can get you started.
So we're just going to go through it before, during, and after.
I'm just going to lay out some things that I think are good thought starters for helping
you show up.
So before, right?
What can you do before writing starts to make it more likely you're going to show up?
But here I usually use the example of going to lift weights, right?
Because you know, I think just as common for writers as the struggles to show up and write,
everybody has tried to go to the gym, whether it's lifting weights or running or swimming
or whatever your Pilates, whatever your thing is, treadmill, elliptical, you name it.
We've all tried that game.
I think you know so so I like to use this because it's a fairly accessible one
I think everyone has a lot of familiarity with right you know imagine the doctor says
You know you go for a checkup. They man. You're not you're in terrible shape
You need to get to the gym and you've never been a gym person
Yeah, you used to try to go here and there but you never could really get in the habit of it, right?
So like man, I need to I need to find a way to make myself get to the gym. I'm gonna do that
I'm gonna make it easier and more likely they they get to the gym. Well
So imagine the sort of a scenario somewhat like this
First you join the really nice gym in town
Right the one with the nicest machines. It's got the hot tubs. It's got the whatever whatever the works out, right?
And then you buy yourself some really nice gym clothes that you look real good in
Then you call a friend and you say you know what I did actresses. I got to start going to the gym. I really
Could use some support and it would be a lot more fun for me if if I had a gym buddy
Will you will you go to the gym with me?
Buddy says yes, and you're like well, you know if I don't schedule it. It's probably never gonna happen
So let's let's do it Monday Wednesday Friday, and you're like, okay. Where should we meet?
All right, let's meet at the bench press. So we're gonna start the bench press. Okay. All right. Well, what should we do when we're there?
well
Let's let's let's do these six machines and we're gonna do them in this order
All right, okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. And so and then you get there and then you put your your
Headphones in your your head and you guys both listen to your listen to your pump-up music
And you got your little
Check sheet that says what the exercises are and what your machines are using which weights are using and then you guys listen to your pump-up music
And you start at the bench press and you work your way through there and you know afterwards
we're going to get a smoothie in the bar at the gym.
We're going to do hot tub.
Like, think of all those things that you did that then,
you know, by the time you got to the bench press machine,
right, all those things that you did before,
they're not the lifting itself, right?
But they make the lifting sort of inevitable.
I mean, if you, oh, and, you know, you drive to the gym,
but, you know, you don't want to park and walk a long way
because what if it's raining?
That'd be a deterrent.
So you get a parking pass to the parking lot,
parking garage that's right next to the gym, right?
So think about, you're sort of stacking the deck here.
You're trying to do everything you can
to make it easier to show up,
to make it more fun to show up.
All those are decisions you took
before you got to the gym.
And all they did was put you
in front of the bench press machine.
They didn't do any lifting for you,
but they made it so much easier to get there, didn't they?
Absolutely.
So what can we do like that in our writing world?
Well, I think there are a few kind of really key things
that are before things that make it much more likely
that we're gonna get to our writing session.
And the first is a consistent schedule.
You know, the simplest version of this old wisdom is,
you know, things we schedule, we tend to do,
things we don't schedule, we tend not to do.
And so one of the best ways you can make it more likely
that you will do something is to schedule it.
Boom.
There's more to say about all of these things,
but we don't wanna go forever.
So consistent schedule, one of the number one things.
The second big thing is having a plan, right?
It turns out that a lot of people
don't really plan ahead too much what they're gonna do.
And one of the dangers there is that if you don't have,
kind of like not having a schedule,
if you don't have an agenda,
there is nothing sort of on your brain
that needs to be done at this next writing session.
and it makes it a lot easier to skip if you don't know
that what's about to happen is revising chapter three
or whatever it might be.
The other thing is that when you show up,
if you're dealing with things like burnout
or you're dealing with things like low motivation
and stuff like that, having a plan
that through your sort of strategic thinking
makes the writing session, you map yourself out a writing session that's more interesting,
maybe that skinny down, where you mix different tasks so that you don't overwhelm yourself,
right?
Each of these things is a way to make the writing session that's ahead of you on the
schedule more palatable, easier to show up for.
A third thing, a third big thing that can help with the before part is preparation.
Have you ever skipped a writing session because you realize you didn't do any of the prep
you needed to be ready to do the writing?
I've been there.
This is especially true for nonfiction people.
I can't write chapter three until I do the analysis of the data.
If I haven't done the analysis of the data, I can't do it.
I got things I gotta do.
It might be doing a bit of pre-work.
I have to listen to the interviews before I write my summary.
If I haven't done that, I can't do the next.
It could be, I need to get my stuff ready, I need to get the videos, I need to do whatever.
There's all sorts of little logistical crud in a writing life and a lot of them are precursors
to the writing actually happening.
If you haven't done them, the writing is going to get pushed back.
Sometimes it's as simple as making the decision to get the preparation done beforehand.
The fourth thing is kind of akin to the gym sort of scenario I discussed and that is a
broad category of things I call showing up rituals.
And you know, at different points in your writing life, your need for a showing up ritual
like carrots, inducements if you will, a glide path to make it easy to show up, it will vary
over time.
There will be times in your writing life when wild animals could not keep you away from
your desk because you cannot wait to keep writing.
You wish everyone would die so you can just sit down and write.
That's awesome.
That feels so cool.
Then there are going to be other times when you're like, "Oh, I think it's going to rain
later today.
I won't go writing.
I might get wet."
Right?
And you don't really hardly even need an excuse not to go.
So what helps on those sorts of days is a showing up ritual.
Let me give you an example of a show up ritual that I had long ago when I was a new, almost
professor and adjunct while I was finishing my dissertation.
And I had to get up early in the morning and go to my office.
I had to do that partly to escape the little kid who would, you know, in our house who
was, I don't know, he was six months old, eight months old.
There was no peace in our house.
I had to leave the house to go to work
and I had to teach every day.
So I needed to get some writing in
before class preparation I had to start.
So I'd get up early, walk the dog,
then I'd walk to work and it was in Michigan.
So it was cold, it was often crappy weather,
it was dark all winter long, right?
These are not great days to get to the office early.
No one wants to do this.
I didn't want to do this particularly.
So how do I get myself to do that?
What was the before stuff that helped?
Well, it was pretty simple for me.
My favorite food in the world is peanut butter.
And so to help myself show up,
I made a beeline for the bagel shop.
I got my toasted peanut butter bagel,
usually an Assess Me bagel.
I got a hot mug of black coffee.
I took that to the office, booted up my work station,
my command center, put on the classical music.
Quick check of the email to make sure
no thing was burning, but then read the New York Times,
typically, maybe listen to some NPR depending on the mood.
And whilst I am eating and enjoying the coffee,
my brain is starting to wake up,
I'm starting to feel happy, I'm in a good mood.
And when the bagel was finished,
that was my cue to segue into writing.
I would pull the notes over from the edge of the desk towards me and that would dig in.
That's how I got myself to show up.
A little pure bribery.
What's your showing up ritual going to be?
Is it a little frappellappuccino at the coffee shop?
Is it having a friend to meet?
Is it working at a place you particularly like?
It could be a number of things, right?
thinking about what makes it more enjoyable to go and be and do the thing
right that's the kind of stuff we're looking for so those are the kinds of
things you can do before to make it more likely you'll go now I mean as with the
gym thing that there's no end to the number of things you can do to make it
easier so for example you know if you tend to go to a office that's far away
find a place that's closer that makes it easier you're less likely to say oh I
don't have the energy to get all the way there if there's a perfect
garage that's closer and you can afford it. Get the closer parking garage. There are all sorts of
things. If you usually walk but it would be faster to bike, maybe you could get a used bike. Any number
of things, the only limit is your creativity, the number of ways you can improve your likelihood
of showing up by making it easier and more enjoyable to do so. The before part is key.
then there's during, right? And a lot of, I don't think people often think of the
during as important for showing up, but you have to be showing up pretty much
constantly. And the reason I know this is because I talk to a lot of
writers and I don't know very many of them who
will tell me that they have never been distracted by social media.
I don't know anyone whose writing has not occasionally been derailed by social media,
by email, by other distractions of various sorts.
Getting a phone call, looking at your texts, deciding to text someone in the middle of
a writing session, deciding to clean the house in the middle of a writing session, right?
The lack of focus, the distractibility, right, of all of us, that's a really serious issue.
So how do you make it less likely that you are distracted, right?
So focus and flow rituals for me are a big piece of showing up during your writing sessions.
So focus and flow rituals and support tools I guess if you want can take so many forms.
Now food and drink can also, like for a lot of people, for a lot of writers caffeine is
the way you keep your brain on task.
If you don't have caffeine life gets ugly quickly.
Having a writing buddy for a lot of people.
a lot of people love to have like a little writing hive, a little writing collective,
a little writing sprint, or there's a bunch of people having other people focused on their
writing gives them a lot of momentum that they sometimes don't have on their own. That can be
great. A lot of people like to have an opening ritual like you know whatever it might be to kind
of tell yourself all right you know for me it was reading the paper and listen to some music that
was kind of an opening ritual for me because my brain was in a very happy state it was ready to
to get going at that point. Just an abrupt switch from close the door, take off my coat
in the middle, you know, I'm 12 degrees and I'm freezing. Like I can't sit down and write
right away. I need a warm up, you know, so how about a warm up? Speaking of which, for
a lot of people, a little journaling or exploratory writing, often the rate of warm up. A rehash
of what the session is going to be. Sometimes people go over the agenda for the day. Like
there's a lot of different opening rituals that can get your brain in the right place.
That's a lot of what being present for your writing session is about that focus and finding
that flow state.
Music for a lot of people.
I can't listen to Beethoven because it's too jangly.
I get too excited, but I love coffee shop noise.
I actually sometimes use an app that has coffee shop noise.
Colmar music and some Baroque string stuff.
That can be good for me.
Maybe some quiet piano type of thing.
That can be great for my focus.
Little buffer sessions, right, if you're spending a whole afternoon, the idea that you're never
going to check email, you're never going to check social media is probably unrealistic.
So scheduling buffer blocks within your long writing sessions can be a very good strategic
use of time.
Give yourself whatever the right period of time is a couple of times or however many during
the day so that you don't spend every other minute looking at your email, right?
is that is a terrible distraction.
A lot of people have distraction blocking apps installed
that they turn on.
You might also use something like a Pomodoro timer.
So all of these things, my point being,
you're not just writing or not writing.
You're doing things, you're making decisions,
you're implementing strategies that either make it easier
to write or they don't.
So make it easier, make it more enjoyable,
make it more productive, make it more rewarding.
'Cause if you do those things,
you're more likely to keep writing.
you're more likely to write the next time.
What else can help in the during?
Well, for me, there's another couple of big things.
One is having a conducive writing space.
Again, if you're on fire, you could probably sit down
in the middle of a crowded bus station and write.
But most of the time is not like that.
Most of the time, you need a space that makes you feel good,
that makes you feel comfortable,
in which you aren't uncomfortable in your chair,
that you can see the monitor or monitors or whatever it is where you have all your stuff
around you that you need to do whatever writing it is you're doing.
And for me, I've loved over the years working in my various offices at the university.
I've been lucky enough to have a very nice home office.
But I have a very peculiar, you know, particular setup that I like and I try to replicate it
wherever I go and that's my happiest place.
And I've also liked coffee shops and I have a sort of particular strategy that I use for
coffee shops.
Just use any coffee shop, that's for sure.
Really can't be one where anyone I know is going to be, for example.
But I don't mind a coffee shop.
But a conducive writing space is fantastic.
You know, I think people often under appreciate how important space can be to inspiring us to do our best thinking.
I really believe that to be true.
I'm always inspired by the gracious university library buildings and other things on university campuses.
I find that those things elevate me, my spirit, in a way that, you know, lets me think, I
think better than I probably would have somewhere else.
And so maybe there are places like that for you, you know, if you're not writing in one
of those places now, can you?
Right?
That's an option maybe.
And then somewhat related to that is the tools you write with.
You know, writers always have a favorite notebook, a favorite pen or pencil.
I'm sure you care about what kind of computer you use.
But you know, I'm a big follower of Mary Kondo and her Konmari approach to life and tidying.
And my big theory about your writing tools is you got to Konmari the heck out of those
things.
If your stuff doesn't bring you joy, doesn't inspire you when you sit down, get rid of it
and get something that does.
And I know I'm telling you to spend a lot of money.
I'm not trying to do that, but I have to save up for everything I buy.
Man, when I have a clean workstation,
and I've got a couple of my favorite tools,
I have a favorite mouse, a favorite keyboard,
I got all the stuff I love.
I love sitting down to write here.
And so, for me, that's the way to do it.
So those things help a lot,
because if I have something I don't like
about the writing setup,
it's gonna distract me while I'm writing,
and I don't need that.
So that's the during.
And then finally after.
What sorts of things can you do
after a writing session.
And I think this is probably one of the least appreciated
aspects of the whole thing, because it
sounds like the least relevant from some perspectives.
But there are actually, I think, a few really important things
to do here that make the writing more likely to happen
on a continuous basis.
So first, a very simple trick is whenever you shut down,
is leaving yourself some notes for next time.
where you got to, you know, even just leaving a sticky
or giving yourself a note, because often you're in the mindset,
oh, it's time to go, I gotta hit the bus,
I gotta catch the train, you know,
so-and-so's coming to pick me up in two minutes,
I gotta shut down, but you're in the middle of some stuff,
and your operating memory's got some stuff in it.
You wanna put that down so you don't lose it, right?
And you create, I think Hemingway did this as a routine,
and people have referred to this as a Hemingway bridge,
As you build a bridge from today's session to the next session, you make it so much easier
to start next time if you do this.
Because you've given yourself the first few bars to hum, right?
It's easy.
So you already know what the first few things to do are because you already thought partway
through them.
So you make it easy to get started next time.
That's a huge win, right?
Having a closing ritual, right?
I'm done.
I'm done with the writing session.
You kind of sort of tie it off, sort of salute the session, whatever, right?
I mean, you know, honor the fact that you did it.
Give yourself a pat on the back.
A little reward.
Get yourself a smoothie.
Maybe you don't want to pleasure yourself with calories.
Fine, I get it.
Take a walk.
Enjoy something special because you, right?
My son and I, we like to go to the gym together.
We high five after every session.
We did it.
Hey, that's Monday's lift in the books.
That's Wednesday's lift in the books, right?
It's just a little thing, but it makes me happy
that we did it and it makes me more likely
to want to do it again.
And then there's two things I think that are probably
difficult for a lot of people to do,
but that I think pay off massively in the long run.
And that is to track your writing progress.
And it has a couple of purposes.
One, very simply, is so that you can notice that it's happening
and that you can celebrate it.
Again, rewarding yourself is important.
making it more satisfying and rewarding to do your writing is a big piece of making you
want to keep doing it.
And so tracking your progress is a way to tell yourself, "Wow, I wrote a lot of words
this month.
Wow, I finished a bunch of chapters.
Wow, I wrote a book."
Whatever it might be, right?
I wrote 53 of those, 27 of those.
That's a lot.
I started when I started, I hadn't done any of those.
And now look where I am.
So being able to celebrate your progress requires tracking.
But the other thing that you need to do tracking for is to hold yourself accountable and to
figure out how to solve problems when they arise.
If you're starting to be less productive, if you're starting to notice that there are
problems in your productivity, the only way to really notice that in an honest and useful
way is to track.
People who aren't happy with their weight tend not to get on the scale and they tend
not to know how much they weigh and then they don't know if they're gaining or losing.
If you want to stay at a certain weight, that's really not a good plan.
And the same thing is true with writing.
If you want to be writing at a certain level, you've got to check that you're doing it.
If you're not, it's easy to let that stuff get out of whack and you kind of lie to yourself
or you obfuscate a little bit what's going on until all of a sudden you realize, "I'm
in a rut and I don't know what's going on."
Tracking keeps you out of that problem.
It helps you hold yourself accountable.
And then, and for me in the 12-week year system, you know, there are some other sort of elements
to accountability that can really, really help.
Having a weekly writing group, for example, is something you can do after your writing.
I guess it also, in a systematic sense, is before other writing sessions, right?
It's both after and before.
But having a weekly writing group of friends that you meet with and you talk about how it's
going, you problem solve together, you help each other motivate and stay, you know, you
support each other through the hard stuff. All those things can help you stay
on track. I know for me that having weekly writing groups has been one of the
main engines keeping me on track even when I'm having down periods because I
know I got to show up to the group. I got to help you if I'm doing, especially when
I'm working on a project with people. That's a real forcing mechanism. And so
those are things that aren't the writing but that help you keep the writing on
on track. Alright, so to sum up the entire episode, there are many many many reasons
why it can be difficult to show up. But I think that having a writing routine can answer
a lot of the most common problems. Now I haven't kind of done a one to one mapping here for
you, but I think you can kind of see that all the things I talk about being busy, being
having motivation issues, having disorganization issues,
having burn all those different things.
You can find different ways when you think of writing
not as a binary on/off sort of thing,
but as a process with a before, during, and after.
I think you can see that there are strategies available
to you for combating each of those barriers,
for overcoming each of those barriers,
by looking at the before, the during, and the after.
If you're feeling too busy, right?
That's about a schedule issue.
That's a before issue.
If you're feeling like you're having low motivation,
well, that might be a vision and planning issue.
That could be also a before thing.
If you're having a,
you know, I'm just not feeling it.
I'm whatever or I'm burned out, right?
That might be a, it could be a schedule thing
where you sort of lighten your schedule from writing
or where you change the agenda.
So you're planning and then you maybe do some stuff
that makes it more fun to write because you're just
to bring out because it gets too hard.
You're just, you're grinding, you know?
And you need to make a little more fun to write.
Maybe add some friends, maybe, you know, whatever it might be.
So I'm not claiming that, you know,
having a weekly writing routine cures cancer,
but I'm not saying it doesn't.
I guess that's what I'm saying, right?
So I think it is, again, it doesn't solve every problem,
but it is at the core for me of a productive writing career.
and I think that if you want to be not just a productive writer, but a happy writer, finding
a routine that works for you that makes you feel like writing is easy and enjoyable, where
you can be productive, and where you find it rewarding to have made all your writing sessions
in a given week, that's where it's at, right? Not just being a productive writer, but being
a happy and productive writer. That's what we're really looking for.
Alright, I hope you found this useful.
Love to hear feedback and thoughts at [email protected].
And until next time, happy writing.
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