Blog Trouble

I am realizing that, with writing, I have A LOT of thoughts. What I don’t have is a writing habit. I’ve had one in the past— at least a journalling habit— which I lost in my twenties, probably to the internet. If I’d started a blog then, I’d probably be famous now! But, here we are. I’m an aspiring writer without a writing habit.

Based on writing advice books, I don’t think my problem is that uncommon— most writing advice does seem to start with ‘you must write’— so I’m trying to not beat myself up over it. But what can I do to fix it? Here’s what I’m going to try:

1. Dedicated writing space- I’m fortunate to have a pretty desk that I don’t need to use for work from home, so it can be a 100% writing space. The usual problem is that other stuff is piled up on it, but I’ve been working over the last few weeks to just keep it clear, so hopefully that will help! The secondary problem is that I don’t have a chair for it— for now, I’m wheeling over my work-from-home chair to use, but I think I might bring an extra dining room chair upstairs, just so that there’s one less hurdle to use it every day. I may need an ergonomic keyboard for this set-up someday, maybe that’s something I can use as a reward for regularly posting?
2. Time to write- I think time to write comes in two flavors. There are folks who are working, and have to care for young children and take care of their home, and they really have very little time to write. There are other folks who have leisure time available, but are distracted by other ways of using the time. I most definitely fall into the latter category. Despite working full time and plenty of social and leisure activities, I definitely have time to write. The problem is doing it! I’m going to try building it in as a morning activity, coupled with coffee drinking. Hitching it to coffee means it will happen every day! The challenge here is getting out of bed without spending a silly amount of time screwing around on my phone.

I think that’s it? I’m actually not planning on tracking or doing firm rewards for a certain number of days writing/words written/posts published— I’ve found that those efforts are derailed as soon as I have a busy week and can’t track. I’m hoping the writing/coffee habit will be enough to easily restart the habit anytime a busy week knocks me off track.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that’s the right approach (for me). Years ago, I took Gretchen Rubin’s Habit Tendency quiz, and I’m a firm rebel. We don’t respond well to either outer or inner obligations— meaning, meeting up with a friend is a bad commitment method (I tend to resist ongoing commitments that I don’t have control over), and ‘making a date with myself’ doesn’t work either (I’ll just blow myself off if I feel like it!). For Rebels to build habits, it has to become part of identify. So…. writing is just ‘what I do when I drink coffee in the morning’— it’s as simple as that!