How to Build a Good Writing Habit

Guest Post by Nikita Andester

Whenever I work on a new oil painting, nothing slows my roll as much as falling off for a week or two. The paint on the canvas dries, the black I mixed specifically for the painting cakes on the palette, and did I use a cool red or warm? The shadows, too, no longer blend; instead I have to paint over existing patches of near-finished color just to reach where I was last. Of course, none of this would be an issue if I just managed to keep the paint wet.

For writing, I find the exact same thing is true. If I neglect a project for a week (two weeks, god forbid, a month), when I come back, it’s almost written in an unfamiliar language. Who are these characters? What motivated her to do that?? And the setting? It becomes a half-drawn map of a place I visited once when I was eight.

Attending to our projects daily, even for five minutes in a work break, can prime our brains to be more receptive to writing, almost like getting warmed up at the gym. Taking five minutes where we can makes it a lot easier to sit down for an hour when we’ve got the means to do so.

But for some folks, the hard part is finding where to snatch that five minutes in the first place. I think that often stems from starting with goals that are too nebulous. While it’s great to, say, plan on hitting that NYT Bestseller list, there are about 17000 micro steps that go on before you even reach the stage of looking for an agent like Tommy. Bestsellers don’t start and end with the goal of becoming bestsellers: they start with a habit built from small, consistent, and actionable steps.

So if you’re struggling to get a good writing habit in place, start by writing down that big goal – the lofty one, the one that keeps you up at night for how bad you want it. And once you’ve got it on a piece of paper, break it into small, actionable steps. This will look messy, and that’s okay. If you want to write the next great fantasy epic put out by Tor, then great! Dream big. Your goals might at first just look like “write novel,” “get agent.”

That’s when it’s time to dig deeper. Break “write novel” into small blocks, like “outline” or “edit draft one.” Now, take those goals and break them down to even smaller steps, til it seems like you have every brick laid out for the path ahead.

Then, identify step one. What’s the very first thing you need to do in order to accomplish that goal? Write it down and set a date to do it by. Remember: if you find you need to do something else before step one, that means it’s not step one! Your first step may be as simple as needing to find your draft you set aside somewhere, but it’s a powerful initiation into building a consistent writing habit.

Set your to-do list aside for now and look at your existing planner. The next step is to craft a monthly calendar to keep your goals on track. On a piece of paper partitioned for all seven days of the week, write down what you must do each day, your nonnegotiables that move for nobody, not even your writerly ambitions. For instance, I have a day job as Assistant Competition Director at NYC Midnight and I have to write my newsletter. I also have a few chronic conditions, so I need to stick to my health routines. When plotting out my writing calendar, I first include all these elements, putting them on the corresponding days of the week. Once those are on the calendar, I then consider where I want my career to go, turning to the to-do list I wrote earlier: as a multidisciplinary artist, that means my goal is to bake writing and visual art into every single day. Because as Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days, after all, is how we spend our lives.”

You’ll probably need to make a few drafts of the daily schedule before you find one that works for you, moving things as you remember them, or removing things you realize aren’t always necessary. It definitely takes some tweaking before it’s streamlined, but once you have your week by week set up as you like it, you can then go ahead and turn it into a four-week calendar using a chart in your writing software.

Once you have your own four-week calendar, print it out and stick it somewhere you see daily. If you work at a desk, hang it on the wall beside you. If you work in a restaurant, put it by your dresser or where you hang your server’s apron at the end of the day, so it’s always in your line of sight.

Check the items off as you complete them daily, and whenever you knock out everything on your list, reward yourself! I use stickers; seeing them peppering my calendar makes me feel great, and reminds me that I tried my best.

But while a calendar gets you far, sometimes our ambitions call for more specificity. That’s where your original to-do list comes in. I recommend keeping a physical list with a due date nearby as well. I choose a few items from my grander ambition to-do list and put it on a sticky note on my desk with a header like “by 3/25, I will have…” This list contains my primary creative goals for the next week, like “finished the next draft of my novel” or “drafted an idea for my patron postcards.” By putting that list somewhere I see it every day, (on the desk, beside the calendar, etc.) I am inclined to remember it, and those to-dos inform how I carry out the weekly calendar. Think about it this way: if you accomplish just one task from your big ambitions to-do list every week – hell, every month – you’ll find yourself far closer to achieving said goal than you would have been without concrete guideposts. Keep that physical checklist tacked to the wall where you can see it, too, so you’re always aware of your next steps.

The more we see physical reminders of our goals each and every day, the more inclined I find we are to actually work towards them.

And as you hit milestones, reward yourself! You can choose how. For me, it’s still with stickers, because I am seven. But for you, it may be that each time you knock something off the big list (finish chapter 2, for example), you go grab your favorite coffee or take yourself rollerblading.

Even small wins build to big gains. I believe in rewarding yourself, even if you only spend ten minutes at your desk/couch writing. A hundred words. Fifty words. Twenty words. Keep the paint wet, show up for yourself, and that book you dream about will happen.

Ultimately, this all goes back to the most basic part of building a good writing habit: compassion for yourself. Even if all you manage is a hundred words, you wrote, you put your effort into crafting a narrative. You’re building that habit.

Before developing a consistent habit, my writing life was very disorganized. But since employing these calendars and lists, my career – and my passion and my life – has changed. I have taught art workshops, I am hanging my paintings at my neighborhood bar, opened my Etsy, landed my first paid subscriber on Substack who’s a stranger (hi, stranger!), have two separate novels in different stages of completion, spoke on my first writing panel at WorldCon, and I am speaking in four panels and leading two workshops at EasterCon this April.

Showing up for yourself with small wins day in and day out – and tracking them each step of the way – can help you accomplish your goals, too.

Recommended references:

• James Clear

• Audrey Knox – even if you write prose instead of screenplays, I cannot recommend Audrey’s emails enough; they are wildly insightful about productivity for writers and have revolutionized my writing habits.

• Genius Code – I know, I know, it seems woo woo, but give it a try; it might surprise you!

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Nikita Andester (she/they) is an author and multimedia artist living in Toulouse, France. Their fiction and visual art alike draw from past experiences living in campers, blueberry farming, and waiting tables. She runs Snail Mail Sweethearts, a Substack about history's juiciest correspondence, featuring monthly microfiction and original artwork. Nikita's fiction can be found in The New Orleans Review, Nifty Lit, Bourbon Penn, and Typehouse Literary Magazine, among others.