What I Wish I’d Known About Writing Habits

Tigest Girma, Immortal Dark Trilogy 

The desire to connect with as many readers as possible fuels my writing practice.

If I find something interesting, my instinct is to write it down. I collect these moments over weeks and sometimes months before trying to fashion them into a story.

I like to write for about thirty-five minutes, followed by a short five-minute break. This allows me enough time to reset if I’m stuck on something and not lose momentum. I try to sneak writing into whatever break I have from other commitments. Some days that’s late at night, other times it’s while waiting in line for shopping. ‘Write freely and edit ruthlessly’ is advice that allows me to explore all topics of intrigue without any sort of restriction. Afterwards, it’s a matter of removing what doesn’t fit. 

Glenn Diaz, Yñiga 

I wish I’d known that while, yes, for the broad majority a writing routine violently competes with the material demands of a life, it can also be life-sustaining. Wish I’d known that a chair with good lumbar support is non-negotiable, ditto a sturdy laptop stand, a vertical mouse. That a writing routine is worth protecting, that protecting it means choosing a life that makes it possible, or at least imaginable, especially on days or weeks or months when life is all that you could do. Wish I’d known that for plotting, nothing compares to messy handwritten notes and diagrams and sketches. That a writing routine can be propelled by reading prose that you envy. That it means one day you have zero words and a year or two later you have 72,000—the miracle of accumulation, the labour of keeping at it, in writing as in life. 

Sam Elliott, Haze 

One of life’s greatest motivators to do anything is fear. It’s your lifelong companion as a writer, and one you should never wish away. Fear, like the Devil, answers to many names, but I know it best as the demon of self-doubt perched on my shoulder parrot-on-pirate-style. It spends its time whispering with a fork-tongued into my ear, about how much of a hack I am, how I can’t write, that no one will ever want to read my novels and no one should ever be made to suffer through them anyway. The demon’s always there, doing its thing—and it is never more powerful than right before I start a writing session. For years, every time I sat down to write, I tried pretending the demon wasn’t there, that it held no power. It wasn’t until I realised that the self-doubt, the fear demon, is the greatest friend you can have.

Fear is the finest motivator in writing—far more than validation, because let’s face it: how often do you truly get that? Fear enables you to show up, every time, and go over the same words that you’ve come to hate, hell-bent on doing the impossible: making them perfect. Take comfort in knowing that every true writer has that demon on their shoulder, and may every one of us rue the day that they’re not there because in its place would be an acceptance of the bare minimum, the good enough. We have our Fear companion because they keep us honest and humble and forevermore striving to produce the best piece of writing we possibly can. So, whenever you sit down to start a writing session, give that little demon a little head-pat—their existence means you’re a true writer, destined to produce the truest, best work you can.

George Kemp, Soft Serve

I wish I had known about walking. Ideas don’t come to me in a polite, orderly way—they are stubborn, like a puppy. No matter how much you beg them to come to you, they will only do that when they are ready. In fact, the more you beg, the more likely they are to scurry away. So I walk. I walk towards the ideas to try and catch up to them. A sneak attack. Along a beach, around Centennial Park—it doesn’t matter. Something about the rhythm, one leg and then the other, metronomically working together to propel you forward, is the biggest hack I wish I knew.

Shirley Le, Funny Ethnics 

I wish I’d known how to shatter the thick glass poured over my skin since birth, ensuring my face was eternally saved. In 2019, I stayed at Varuna in a studio cottage surrounded by purple flowers that opened their petals when there was enough sunlight. I fancied myself a real writer with a real practice and a real purpose.

The first morning, I sat at a wooden desk, determined to write about gangs in Bankstown. By noon, I’d deleted everything, fearing that I was lapsing into 90s Cabramatta clichés. Suddenly, I felt like A Bit Of A Bloody Princess, which is what my cousin Tuan called me after I told him I wanted to write creatively.

So I called my friend Jenny to whinge. After giving me the 411 on her situationship, Jenny said, ‘Stop spinning out, just write like you’re spreading goss.’ I stood up and did tai chi twists in a patch of sunlight inside my princess cottage. The back of my right hand smacked into a carafe on the desk, shattering it into a thousand cubic zirconias. The water slowly crept to my laptop, stopping right at the edge of the keyboard. I decided it was time to stop spinning out and let myself breathe through all the little shards.

Margaret Merrilees, Scared Angry Laughing 

Complete self-absorption is useful. Shameless selfish solitary self-centredness. I like to wake alone, just me and those first clear thoughts. I speak to no one until the ideas are committed to paper or screen. After that, it’s best if the general public goes off to work or school or wherever and leaves the morning beach entirely to me. The waves roll in and out, and the words roll with them. Gradually the scouring action produces a few perfectly satisfying phrases or sentences, sometimes a whole page. A stub of pencil and a piece of paper are vital at this point. Luckily (for human relationships) the solitude is no longer crucial once a first draft is complete. But I still need to sleep on it for a while (and wake and walk on it) before I’m ready to show it around and deal with the feedback.

Jane Messer, Raven Mother 

It’s my way of being in the world. I can’t imagine not writing. It’s the one thing I do where I forget the passage of time. But I’m also disciplined. I have a craft, I am an artist and I want to hone my craft, always.

There is no routine. No fix. No easy response. I write as often as I can. I do sometimes use word counts or turn my phone’s timer on for twenty-five minutes. Mostly when the writing is difficult. A word count can make me feel like I got there. The timer going off means I can run to the kitchen and eat some grapes. When the words I’m trying to put down are shit, I’ll tell myself, ‘I hate this sentence, but I’m going to write it anyway.’ Knowing that once written, I can revise it the next day.

If I were dropped accidentally into the reality television series Alone, I’d be scratching stories into the bark of trees. I’m happy with whatever. I like a smooth keyboard that isn’t stiff or noisy. I like a screen that’s not blurry. I do love my laptop. My mouse is an ergonomic design—that’s a must. If I’m handwriting, I prefer a lined page. I need my library access for research. I like a deadline. I like fresh air and light around me.

Juggling time is the most difficult of questions. Because writing doesn’t pay the bills and it’s the most insecure of careers. And these other commitments are sometimes the parts of our life that make us happy and fully alive: lovers, spending time with an aging parent, social activism, tending to a garden, reading books, dancing. Perhaps I’m more realistic in my planning now? I know that there might be months when I’m going to be focused on other things, so I adjust and think, hey, I might tinker a bit on that short thing that’s mostly finished. Sometimes I choose not try for the big project that needs lots of focus and hours.

Jennifer Mills, A Concise Compendium of Wonder  

I have a superstitious belief in routine. I like to be at my desk early and get straight to work, ignoring my phone and emails for a few hours if I can. As a freelancer, of course I have to be flexible within that—I often have several projects to work on at once, so each day looks different—but I do my best creative work first thing. All I need is a pen and paper. I do use a laptop, but I write my first drafts by hand in unlined notebooks. It’s an old habit that’s become my happy place, where I feel free to explore.

I’ve worked in cramped share houses, sheds, hallways, on trains and while living out of my car, so I’m extremely grateful to have a whole room in my house that is just my office. It means I can leave notes out on my desk and pick up where I left off much more easily. Having a specific space that is just for writing makes it much easier to step back into an imagined world. I’ll never take it for granted.

I don’t plan too much in advance, so I always arrive at my desk with a feeling of curiosity and excitement about what might happen—I’m very lucky to feel that way about work! I don’t tend to procrastinate or avoid writing because I enjoy solving the strange little puzzles I set for myself too much. If I find I’m avoiding it, it’s a sign that something’s not working.

Word count goals can be helpful for short periods of time, but if I use them I tend to set a generously low bar for myself. Three hundred good words are often better than two thousand that you know you’ll delete the next day. I’m a slow and steady worker, not a sprinter. I’ve been through and witnessed enough burnout to know that it’s a healthier approach for me to do less, more often. How do I juggle writing with other commitments? Cries laughing.

Nobody’s going to give you permission to do this; the only way to find out what you’re capable of is to try. There aren’t any rules and that’s a blessing. So just get on with it, I reckon.

JP Pomare, The Wrong Woman 

Any number of things drive my writing practice. Curiosity in part. I write to think and to problem-solve. I write to entertain myself first. I also think reading really drives my practice. I often say reading and writing are two feet, and you can’t move forward by only using one—I have to have both. I’ll often be reading a book and am struck by inspiration or a need to write.

Do I have a routine? Kind of, yes. But it changes all the time depending on what stage of the process I am at. I know I tend to work best early in the morning and late at night. I now have an office which I work at, and it’s a good queue to prepare my body and mind for work. I have a kid who is starting school this year. As much as she demands a lot of my time, she also gives my days structure, and I treat most other commitments the same way. I feel most writers can really only write for a couple of hours a day, so having other commitments isn’t such a constraint—it just means those few precious hours where you aren’t busy you must fill with writing.

I find reading gets me back to the page. And occasionally I’ll watch a movie or a show, and that seems to help too. I have a file on my phone that’s now about seven years old that is full of ideas and observations and particular lines that I find compelling or interesting. When I open that up, it’s like connecting jumper cables to my brain. I don’t have any special tools—I have Microsoft Word and an old MacBook Air. I don’t know what more anyone needs.

My writing routine has changed over time. I’ve started to look after myself a bit more, and that means no more all-nighters, no more working myself into the ground, no more coffee, no more leaving edits until the last moment. I would say I valued productivity over all else. When I was a bit younger, I thought I could outwork the issues I had with whatever project I was working on, but now I’ve come to appreciate balance. I now know that my best work happens in the quiet moments when I’m on a long walk or I’m just sitting down listening to music.

Of all the very talented writers I have met over the years with aspirations of writing a novel, most haven’t finished a first draft. I’ll read their prose and think holy mackerel, you can write, but of course stringing together a few poetic or brilliant lines is quite different to knocking out an entire draft of a novel. Of those who do finish a draft, most don’t ever go back to it, or they give up halfway through an edit. It’s so boring and so unsexy, but the best thing any writer can do is persevere. Start writing something and stick with it.

Micaela Sahhar, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate 

Writing requires considerable discipline but not necessarily of the kind that the word routine conjures. I think of writing as a muscle as much as a craft, like playing the piano. The day-to-day of it can be gruelling, but over time you can see the skill and refinement that showing up to the keys or the page—often with more grim determination than inspiration—helps you cultivate.

And then there’s the question of time: as a Palestinian writer, I am as much beholden to the urgent and the necessary as I am to the idea of writing as an art approaching perfection. These things can exist together, but sometimes the pressures compete and can become overwhelming; that’s when years of training help steer you to clarity.

One of the ways that writers can nurture that discipline is to keep a notebook. It seems sort of obvious, but each book can be wildly different, including your own notebooks over years of maintaining the practice. My first writing mentor was an ardent enthusiast for writers’ notebooks as a physical object that one carried about with them, and in which the editorial and judgemental voice is not permitted. These are places for the whole, glorious, undigested panoply of what arrests your attention—it could be as small as a shaft of light or as big as what threatens our way of life—there is room for all of it. Over time I’ve learnt that it isn’t the notebook I’m keeping now that offers the most value. It’s the older notebooks that will tug at my mind—imperfect and fragmentary archives, but perhaps one day perfectly suited to a project.

I am always grateful for the work I did yesterday.

Olivia Tolich, Side Character Energy 

Throw out the rulebook. I’ve done the courses, listened to the podcasts, attended the panels, bought Stephen King’s On Writing. I was drowning in musts and shoulds—I clearly wasn’t a ‘real’ writer because I wasn’t writing every day or getting up at five in the morning or drinking coffee. But it’s important to understand how other people do things only insofar as it gives you ideas with which to experiment and find what works best for you, not to mimic someone else in pursuit of the Only Way to Do Things.

You might be like me and have no consistent writing routine or process to speak of. I write in bursts when I am feeling creative, I procrastinate well and often, and I can go weeks without a single word on the page. I have come to understand that I am more likely to write when I have slept well, I have eaten a good meal and I am in a calm state of mind, so I do my best to cultivate that in my everyday life to mixed results.

I do not juggle writing with other commitments well. A good writing day means everything else falls over. The first 20,000 words are the hardest. It is painful to come to the page when the end is still so far away. It’s just about forcing myself to write, even if it’s terrible, especially if it’s terrible, and then getting on a roll once I am over the hump. You can edit something, but you can’t edit nothing, so you just have to push on.

The tool I can’t live without? A really detailed chapter plan. I remain impressed by the pantsers, but I will never be one of them. The contradiction of my intricate planning and my chaotic writing approach is not lost on me. So, if you’re looking for a sign to just let go and do things your own way, this is it.

Cameron Sullivan, The Red Winter 

I’m still figuring out my writing routine in a lot of ways! My first novel, The Red Winter, was a passion project that I wrote over the course of seven years, tapping away on weekends or whenever I felt like it. This is not a workable routine for my next book and the adjustment requires a lot of learning on my part.

The first thing I wish I’d known is to leave my phone in another room, on silent, with the door closed. There is no greater thief of attention and focus. The second is that most of my fear and overwhelm disappear once I just start writing. One solution I’ve found very effective is the ‘two minutes’ principle. Rather than sitting down and looking up the side of a hundred-thousand-word mountain, I just commit to two minutes of writing. This inevitably turns into a couple of hours—once I’m doing it, the pleasure of the process sustains itself.

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• ‘The daily writing routines of Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Haruki Murakami and other famous writers’, The Story
• ‘Six Writers on How They Tackle Writer’s Block’, LitHub
• ‘Rick Rubin: Magic, Everyday Mystery and Getting Creative’, On Being with Krista Tippett