StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 29: How do you create the right habits to finish a novel?
One of the hardest things people can do, let alone writers, is to set good habits. But in order to finish a project as long and difficult as a novel, this skill is paramount.
Creating habits requires training your brain to associate the work of writing as a positive activity. So, if you’re constantly dreading whenever you have to write, you’re probably not going to have a good time. We need to work deliberately and slowly to build our process so that writing is an enjoyable task as often as possible.
How do you even get started? The first step is to create a plan. For this project, we want you to designate a regular, consistent writing time. Make sure it’s a time you can commit to, whether it’s an hour a day or twenty minutes twice a week. You don’t need to completely overhaul your day, but instead carve out a creative space for yourself that becomes a regular part of your existence.
The next step is creating achievable goals. This means starting out as small as possible. If you don’t know what an achievable writing goal is for you, try a few writing sessions and see how much you get done easily. If you’re regularly writing 500 words, then your goal per session can be 500 words. If you’re struggling to get words down at all, then start your goal out as just sitting down in the chair. This way, you’re achieving the goal just by taking time, and slowly, you can build on this.
The important part about this is that you’re training your brain to always tick the box. Often when trying to carve out new habits, writers create lofty goals that they never or rarely reach, and this is actually training your brain not to get work done and to hate the process.
If your goal is always achievable, then after a week or two weeks of regular writing, it won’t seem like such a big deal. You always hit your goal, right? So sitting down to write changes from an obstacle to a regular part of your process.
Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so if you can only fit in a half-hour session once a week, that’s totally fine. You’ll be surprised at how much work you can get done as long as you work consistently, and more often than not, once you sit down and get into your flow state, you’ll actually want to keep writing because you’ll be inspired and ready to go.
We’d love to hear your plan for writing this novel! Share your designated writing time with us using hashtag #StoryCraftNovelChallenge.
We’ll be writing along with you the entire time, so make sure to follow us to see the process in action!
Happy Writing,
Jess and Theo