{"id":737,"date":"2015-08-07T11:07:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T18:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=737"},"modified":"2015-08-13T21:09:54","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T04:09:54","slug":"the-power-of-habit-is-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/the-power-of-habit-is-real\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Habit is Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all heard this advice a million different ways: bum in seat, don\u2019t wait for the muse, don\u2019t worry about how bad it is \u2013 just get the words down. It\u2019s been six weeks since I vowed to write for an hour every day, and I can tell you one thing: it works. It\u2019s not as simple as writing gurus say it is though, which is of course why people find it so hard to follow (guilty). Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned so far:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Schedules help you make time, and help free up time.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Every functional freelancer I\u2019ve known, or known about, has a solid work schedule. My father\u2019s the best example I know. He gets up and sits down at his desk at the same time every day. Because he sets aside work hours and sticks to them, he has tons of time to muck about in the garden, go deep-sea diving, watch movies, play with robot LEGO, practice glassblowing, renovate the house, and so on. He gets the work done first thing in the morning, so he\u2019s allowed<\/i> to do whatever he wants for the rest of the day. If it\u2019s a big job, he might work all afternoon too, but he still has evenings to himself because he works at a steady pace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You have to be strict with yourself.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The second week of my new writing habit, after the initial buzz wore off, was the worst. I didn\u2019t always want to sit down to write, but I did anyway. My brain fought like crazy, because I wanted to do something else, or couldn\u2019t think of what to write.I didn\u2019t give in to the tantrum. I sat down for that hour no matter what. After a couple weeks of fighting, my brain realized it wasn\u2019t getting out of it. Ever. Even if I push the hour all the way to 11 pm, I stop doing whatever made me push it back and write until midnight. That\u2019s the deadline, and I\u2019m not allowed to miss it for anything.<\/p>\n

Not being allowed to do something else for that hour meant if I didn\u2019t write, I had to stare at a blank screen. I always ended up writing something. If I didn’t have anything to write, I wrote whatever came to mind. Sure it might be garbage, but at least my fingers were typing. I was sure, from all the advice I\u2019d read, that if you force the physical habit, the brain will eventually settle into the pattern and start actually coming up with stuff.<\/p>\n

My last terrible writing session was one where I wrote, \u201cAm I Just Writing Crap?\u201d and poured out all my frustrations. My take-away from that was if I wanted to avoid this situation in the future, I\u2019d best plan what I want to write in advance. Even if I don\u2019t write what I planned, having one will make sure I have something to do if the muse isn\u2019t throwing new stuff at me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wordcount doesn\u2019t matter that much. Neither does turning off the internal editor.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spewing words out as fast as you can and never looking back is a load of crap. I\u2019ve noticed a correlation between how fast I write vs. quality. I can write almost 2000 words\/hour, but every one of them is unsalvageable garbage. Every blog post I wrote that quickly had to be redrafted from scratch. Sure it gave me an outline, but I can work with what I\u2019ve got a lot better if I slow the fuck down<\/i>. With practice I\u2019ve been getting faster, but I know what a good pace feels like now, and it\u2019s one with frequent pauses to reorient my thoughts.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget that thinking time counts as well. So what if you rewrite the same sentence three times before moving on. It\u2019ll be a less crappy sentence than one you blorped out without a care. This is why I decided on a block of time rather than wordcount. An hour a day is manageable, and not a total waste of time if I don\u2019t get much out of it. If I had a wordcount goal instead, I\u2019d be tempted to rush, or I\u2019d spend hours agonizing if the writing wasn\u2019t happening fast enough.<\/p>\n

If I finish my planned writing early, I can spend the rest of the hour planning the next writing session. What matters is staying engaged with my writing projects. It\u2019s become The Sacred Hour. I don\u2019t answer the phone or log onto the internet. I make sure tea is taken care of beforehand. For this hour, I must be looking at this screen and nothing else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It gets easier as the habit forms.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

It took me ages to stop making excuses and put this advice into practice. After clearing the bad starting patch, I find myself angsting about my writing less because I\u2019ve taken one source of stress out of the equation. If<\/i> I will write is no longer a question, because I will no matter what. The question is now what I will write, which changes day by day.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been doing a similar thing with drawing, making myself do it for a half-hour minimum per day. I had a couple projects on the back burner forever, and finally managed to finish one of them. The other is in the planning stage, and in the meantime I\u2019m using the \u201cscribble journal\u201d as a way to bang that half-hour out when I don\u2019t have anything else to do.<\/p>\n

If I total my designated writing hour, 30 min drawing, and 30 min exercise, that\u2019s only two hours of my day. If I get into a groove with a project I\u2019ll keep going on it, but not all day to avoid burn-out. I also leave something to do for the next day so I don\u2019t start cold. I\u2019m getting little projects done so fast, I\u2019ve been finding myself at loose ends about what to do with the rest of my day. I can actually add more projects onto the pile, and even spend part of my day doing things just for fun. Since I got into the habit, I even managed to get this blog post done during my vacation.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all heard this advice a million different ways: bum in seat, don\u2019t wait for the muse, don\u2019t worry about how bad it is \u2013 just get the words down. It\u2019s been six weeks since I vowed to write for an hour every day, and I can tell you one thing: it works. It\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[20,25,36],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-practice","tag-things-that-make-you-go-duh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}