How To Develop A Consistent Daily Writing Practice

Daily writing makes you a better writer and provides you with more content to share with your audience. However, writing every single day isn’t always easy. Things happen that can get in the way of writing consistently and forming a daily writing habit.

Daily writing starts with total clarity. Too many writers go into the day not sure what they will write about next. They know what book, article, blog, or other projects they have to complete, but they don’t know precisely what part they need to compose or what topic they need to tackle.

If you briefly look through the projects in front of you and assign different projects—or parts of projects—to different days, you’ll increase your clarity about what you need to write on any given day. This clarity will help you sit down daily and write without staring at a blank screen.

Clarity Alone Is Not Enough

You can be crystal clear on what you need to write, but if you don’t schedule writing time daily, your calendar will get busy with non-writing tasks quickly. At night, before you go to bed, look at your schedule for the following day and pencil in a time where you will do nothing but produce content. Doing so ensures you have a set time when you must write rather than writing whenever you feel like it or time allows.

When choosing a time to write, I recommend writing at the start of your day and scheduling additional time later, if possible. Even if you wake up a little earlier so you can write for the first 15 minutes of your day, you put yourself at a massive advantage. Writing at the beginning of the day primes you to write multiple times throughout the day. It also will make it easier to transition into longer writing sessions later in the day since you started your day by writing.

Speak Your Writing Into Existence

If you feel pressed for time, you can speak your writing into existence. This option makes it possible to write in almost any situation. You can write content in the traditional format (i.e., sitting at your desk and typing on your computer), but voice gives you another option. On a walk or drive, you can speak your writing project and use an app like Otter.ai to transcribe what you say. This also will help you produce more content, since the average person speaks at 150 words per minute. On the other hand, the average person types at a rate of 40 words per minute.

Don’t consider speaking your writing into existence as just an option for a day when you don’t have time to write. Consider it a way to create more content faster. In fact, we pause and think less when we speak, and those pauses are much shorter when we speak than when we write.

There are pros and cons to speaking versus typing content into existence. However, try incorporating both of these approaches within your writing strategy.

Write, Just Write

One of the big mistakes writers make is that they don’t just write each day. While they write, they also proofread, format, and edit.

When you write, just write. Don’t go back to past work or paragraphs. You can address those later. Let the words flow, and don’t think twice. The less you pause to think when you write, the better it will be for your flow and daily writing habit.

When you’re done writing and want to wrap up, then you can address the post-writing tasks, such as editing. You also can schedule editing on your calendar later in the day during a time where you are less productive as a writer. Understanding when you are and are not a productive writer allows you to schedule the rest of your tasks accordingly.

In Conclusion

With these strategies in place, you will have an easier time writing new content every day and developing a daily writing habit. Know that the first few days of developing a new writing habit are always the hardest, but it will get easier every day. Even if you only have the time to write for two to five minutes on some days, write.

Writing every day builds the habit. If you are patient and continue building the habit long enough, writing daily will soon feel effortless.

How have you developed a consistent writing practice? Tell me in a comment below. And if you found this post useful, please share it!

About the Author

Marc Guberti is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author with over 100,000 students in over 180 countries enrolled in his online courses. He is the host of the Breakthrough Success Podcast and Radio Show, where listeners learn how to achieve their breakthroughs. He coaches content creators on how they can attract more traffic to their content and boost revenue.