Norregaard - The divine guide to creating a daily writing practice

The Divine Guide to Creating a Daily WritingPractice

By Pernille Norregaard

6 Pernille Norregaard

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Editor : NomadEditorial

Cover : Land of Awes

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WHY YOU SHOULD WRITE EVERY DAY

THERE IS ALWAYS AN EXCUSE

MAKE THE TIME

USE YOUR TIME RIGHT

LEARN TO LOVE DEADLINES

CLOSE THE DOOR

SET YOURSELF A DAILY GOAL

NOW WRITE

LEARN TO LOVE THE IMPERFECT

WRITE DURING YOUR PEAK TIME

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR FEAR

FACE YOUR FEAR

CREATE NEW BELIEFS

STICK OR CARROT?

7 STRATEGIES TO STICK WITH YOUR DAILYWRITING PRACTICE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ive nevermet a successful writer who didnt have adaily writing practice. Not one. And Ive been working inpublishing and with writers since 2000.

Imsure successful writers exist who donthave a daily writing practice, but they seem to be a rare (andreclusive) breed. If you want to be a successful writer, you haveto create a daily writing practice and stick with it.

Im not goingto tell you its easy to write every day.Its not.

There will bedays whe n you hate it. Days when youquestion your sanity. Days when you just stare at the screen anddraw a big, fat mind-numbing blank. And, just once in a while, youmay fall flat on your face. Literally. Forehead on keyboard infrustration, desperation, and exhaustion.

Thats normal.

When that happens and you keep writing, youknow that you are a writer.

And somedays Some days may be exhilarating.Fulfilling. Productive. Worthwhile. Fun.

But everyday good or badyou will put words onpages. Lots of words. Lots of pages.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing elsematters except sitt ing downevery day and trying.
Steven Pressfield

I know thatwriting every day is a big commitment,but I promise you that it will get easier with time.

And youll besurprised to find that it is much easier to find time for somethingthat you do every day than for somethingyou just do once in a while. You rarely question whether you havetime to take a shower, drive to work, tuck the kids into bed, eat,or brush your teeth. You just do it, because it is part of yourdaily routine.

In This Year You Write YourNovel , Walter Mosley shares hisexperiences with writing more than 30 novels. According to him,writing every day is the most important habit of the successfulwriter, because it accomplishes two things:

1. Youactually write yourbook/script/article/blog/report /[fill inthe blank]

2. Yoursubconscious works for you, even whenyoure not writing

Thefirst one is obvious, but youll besurprised at how much text you can produce if you write diligentlyfor an hour or two every day.

Thesecond one might surprise you, but whenyou implement a daily writing practice, you will begin to noticethat your text is constantly working and developing in yoursubconscious. When you sit down to write, you will be further alongthan where you left off the day before. And no, its not magic; youwont see more words on your screen, but your brain will haveworked out new sentences, arguments, and plot twists.

Another thingyou might have noticed is that if you trypicking up where youve left off on a text or a project after beingaway from it for a couple of weeks or maybe just a few days, ittakes a while to get into the flow again. So this is anotherbenefit of working on your project every day: you dont have tospend precious time getting into the flow again.

Writing every day also gives you anothergreat advantage: The feeling of progress. That you are movingtowards your dream.

But also know

Whatever youre meant to do, do it now. The conditions arealways impossible.
Doris Lessing

I dont have time.

Im so busy at work right now.

When I get araise , Ill take time off to doit.

Next week Ill have more time.

Theres so much going on in my family andthe kids are sick, but when everyone is well again

This is justa small selection of the excuses I hear when I work with buddingwriters. More often than not , they hopethat they will magically be given three months to really get theirwriting career off the ground.

But it never happens.

It. Does. Not.

The Time Godswill not come down from heaven and giveyou extra hours in the day or extra days in your calendar. So itsa good thing that you dont need the Time Gods to create a dailywriting practice that will take your writing to levels youve neverdreamed of.

Let me tell you a secret

Time is not something you are given. Itssomething you take.

And anywriter who has ever had any kind of success has taken the time todo it. They have put writing at the topof their list of priorities.

You can do ittoo. You just need to know how to do it. Ill show you inthis book.

Imnot going to lie to you: You will need to find time for writing if youare to create a daily practice. But you know that already. So letslook at how you do it.

We might aswell begin with the ugly truth: Finding time in a busy schedule towrite every day means prioritizing. Often, it means that you have to give up things that youlove.

It is so easyto postpone your dream of writing untilits more convenient. It becomes a when I have time project, andthis is the reason so many people only dabble at writing. You haveto make your writing a priority if youre to succeed.

The good newsis that you can make it a priority evenin an already busy life. The bad news is that youre the only onewho can do that. Your family, your boss, your coworkers, or yourclients will not suddenly offer to help you work less or reorganizeyour life so you can write for a couple of hours a day.

You have to decide to do it.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment youcomplete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to theintangible desire.

NapoleonHill

You cantchange the number of hours in a day. But you do get to decide howyou spend them. To create a daily writing habit , youll probably need to decide to do something differentfrom what youre already doing.

Time is simple math.

You have 24hours a day. If youre like most people,you spend eight hours on sleep and eight hours on work (if you havea full-time job, that is). How you use the remaining eight hours isentirely up to you.

Im serious.Its entirely up to you.

One of themore revealing exercises Ive ever done was track ing my time for a week. I wrote down everything I did inincrements of 15 minutes. Then I added it up in differentcategories: work, rest, socializing, TV, Internet, reading,exercising, etc.

You really should try it. You will be surprised tolearn what steals your time.

(If youre anentrepreneur , its really helpful to dothe exercise for your working hours as well, so you can see if youspend your time on the things that are most important toyou.)

Aftertracking my time, I realized that I spenthours surfing the Internet and watching reruns of TV shows Idalready seen. Several hours every day on pointlesspastimes.

Now, dontget me wrong. It is perfectly okay to spend an evening on the sofain front of the TV. For me , its a greatway to relax. But if its become your default way to spend most ofthe remaining eight hours in your day, it is probably time toreevaluate if thats working for you.