(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Ques­tion: What Advice Is There OTHER Than Write Every Day?

TL;DR: There’s a LOT of advice that isn’t “write every day” even about how fre­quent­ly one OUGHT TO be writ­ing, and you cer­tain­ly should write only as much as you derive mean­ing and sat­is­fac­tion from, but the rea­son you’re like­ly to hear this one a lot is because peo­ple who are unhap­py with their lack of writ­ing career con­stant­ly ask work­ing pro­fes­sion­als how they “made it,” like there’s a trick to doing some­thing pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Read a lot, write as much as you can, trust the process (par­tic­u­lar­ly includ­ing peer review), be delib­er­ate with your writ­ing (and read­ing), and check in with some folks who’ve gone before you so that you’re not spin­ning your wheels quite so much.

Longer answer:

The dev­il’s due:

Even as an explic­it ques­tion about advice that is NOT write every day, it is worth tak­ing a moment to explain why this is such com­mon, such good, and such con­ven­tion­al-wis­dom-esque advice among work­ing writ­ers. Basi­cal­ly, I can’t give you all the “oth­er” advice with­out a mas­sive, thir­ty-foot-tall dis­claimer with flam­ing let­ters that the best damn thing you could pos­si­bly do if you want to be a nov­el­ist or some kind of work­ing cre­ative writer is to set aside as much time a day as you pos­si­bly can at the same TIME every day and sit down and write.

1) Because it works. There are few skills at which one can improve so quick­ly and pre­dictably as writ­ing, and there are real­ly NO paths to prose improve­ment that do not involve con­sis­tent work. Cre­ativ­i­ty is like a mus­cle. With the excep­tion of some folks with neu­ro­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, if you set aside the same time each day to do some­thing cre­ative, you WILL get bet­ter at it in an entire­ly pre­dictable way––starting to have ideas about 10–15 min­utes before your “ses­sion” begins. You can kind of “aim” it and it sort of obeys your com­mand, but it’s not entire­ly under your con­trol. (This is why I some­times call it The Force. “You mean, it con­trols your actions?” “Par­tial­ly. But it also obeys your com­mand.”)

I could wall­pa­per a room with all the tes­ti­mo­ni­als I have got­ten since I start­ed blog­ging that writ­ing every day turns out to work amaz­ing­ly well, that peo­ple found their muse, fin­ished their shit, and were able to write con­sis­tent­ly when they sat down. (Though, admit­ted­ly, if I kept it in 12-point font, it would have to be a very small room.)

You know what no one has ever said? “I gen­uine­ly tried to write every day and it broke my cre­ativ­i­ty and made me worse.” 

2) Because it’s metonymy. Look, if you don’t tell the writ­ers’ cabal of my trans­gres­sion, I’ll let you in on a lit­tle secret. You don’t have to write EVERY day. “Write every day” is just an eas­i­er slo­gan than “Write five or six times a week unless you’re sick, but it’s real­ly good to do a lit­tle some­thing on those off days if you can, and.….” Well, you get the idea.

Most of the writ­ers with careers that peo­ple envy write every day, but you can make a liv­ing doing six days a week. Maybe even five. You can spend a cou­ple of days a week writ­ing for a cou­ple of hours instead of five or six. (This is what I do. I have week­ends.) You can take a cou­ple of hours writ­ing three real­ly long emails and call it a day. You can be dis­tract­ed by the news, write six hefty Face­book posts, and then give up on doing some­thing on your nov­el or blog. (It was still writ­ing even if you were dis­tract­ed.) 

What you’re going for is the prac­tice. Take out your instru­ment and do some arpeg­gios for ten min­utes. It does­n’t always have to be a five-hour ses­sion on your work in progress. But also you don’t want to lose that men­tal con­nec­tion you have between ideas and the words that bring them to life, and like any­thing we prac­tice at con­stant­ly where we are using a skill to turn our ideas into an expres­sion oth­er peo­ple can expe­ri­ence (say, like a musi­cal instru­ment), you’ll get rusty faster than you think. 

That’s quite a mouth­ful; “Write every day” is eas­i­er to remem­ber.

3) Because no one ever asks work­ing writ­ers how they can be con­tent­ed hob­by­ists. What work­ing cre­ative writ­ers get asked is how to “make it.” Our suc­cess gets “probed” by peo­ple won­der­ing about agents or pub­lish­ing nepo­tism or our social media mar­ket­ing strate­gies like there is a secret. Yes, there are influ­ences that are unearned advan­tages of birth and can­not be con­trolled, like being white, raised mid­dle class or high­er, hav­ing for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed par­ents, being cishet, being male, and being from an anglo­phone nation (the last real­ly only because of the sheer amount of pub­lish­ing that comes out of New York). There are a few things that are like “force mul­ti­pli­ers” like hav­ing social media out­reach, nepo­tis­tic con­nec­tions in pub­lish­ing, or some entire­ly-unre­lat­ed-to-writ­ing fame, but no one ever EVER got there with­out work­ing out­ra­geous­ly hard and prob­a­bly pret­ty close to dai­ly.

Writ­ers actu­al­ly have a very “Do as thou wilt!” approach to oth­er peo­ple’s writ­ing. 

• Write as much (or not) as ful­fills you.
• You do you. 
• You decide your own lev­el of involve­ment. 
• If you don’t want to write every day.…don’t. 

I’m very clear that cre­ative writ­ing is not a path to rich­es or fame for 99.999% of those who love it. At best it is a long and ardu­ous path to a very mod­est but ful­fill­ing liv­ing where you will be tempt­ed by the kinds of writ­ing that pay bet­ter mon­ey (like tech­ni­cal writ­ing, ghost writ­ing, and even con­tent writ­ing). You can ARGUE with the fact that we writ­ers have con­sis­tent­ly noticed that every one of us (well ALMOST every one of us who’ve crest­ed the more-than-a-cell-phone-bill plateau or “made it” in some sense that the world con­sid­ers mean­ing­ful) tends to write dai­ly or almost so, but it’s not going to make it UN-true. 

Our advice is descrip­tive and empirical––we’re not, like, hold­ing back the real advice from folks until they haze them­selves with dai­ly writ­ing. (And those that do treat this advice in this way are prob­a­bly being ableist.) The fact is, most writ­ers who make a tidy liv­ing (and par­tic­u­lar­ly the ones that make a splooshy one) are the folks who are out there fid­dling with their sched­ules, try­ing to find and jus­ti­fy MORE time writ­ing, not less. 

The more you think of your brain as akin to a musi­cal instru­ment, tak­ing your ideas and emo­tions and con­vert­ing them into a form oth­ers can appre­ci­ate, the more quick­ly you will real­ize that it is a skill that will atro­phy with dis­use, that you need lots of prac­tice to be pro­fi­cient, more to be “good,” that being a hob­by­ist is okay if it makes you hap­py, but that being excep­tion­al or “mak­ing it” will take con­stant train­ing like most folks would­n’t believe. 

OTHER ADVICE 

Okay, okay, it’s been like three pages already. Here’s what you asked for.

Remem­ber, this isn’t advice that’s exclu­sive to peo­ple who can’t write every day. It’s just the oth­er Very Impor­tant Advice™ that will cre­ate work­ing writ­ers. So if you can get to the page every day and ALSO do these things, you will advance even faster.

Write as much as you can: Okay, you can’t, won’t, or don’t want to write every day. Fine. Do it as much as you can. Come close. You don’t get bet­ter at any­thing by NOT doing it. If you want to get bet­ter at writ­ing, write MORE. Write five days. Write six. Write as much as pos­si­ble on the week­ends but at least a fat para­graph dur­ing your lunch break three days a week dur­ing lunch. What­ev­er, just get as close as pos­si­ble.

Read (or keep read­ing): A lot of writ­ers stop read­ing. Like they kind of fig­ure they read all the books they’ll ever need ear­ly in their life and now it’s time to just do the writ­ing part. Don’t do that. Try­ing to only write is like try­ing to only breathe OUT.

Occa­sion­al­ly read things you would­n’t nor­mal­ly: Tough books. Non­fic­tion. West­ern canon lit (if that’s not your nor­mal jam). A Push­cart anthol­o­gy. A genre you don’t usu­al­ly dig. Once in a while take a stroll on a new path and see some new sights. You might learn a few things and get some WONDERFUL ideas.

Think about writ­ing: Let me be hon­est with you. I hate this advice. Even though I have to grudg­ing­ly give it a half nod. I hate this advice because it has fueled so many fuck­ing “Why don’t I have a book deal yet?” enti­tled a‑holes who tell you in that super­cil­ious way that they don’t NEED to write every day because they THINK about writ­ing. (For some rea­son, I always imag­ine them tak­ing a drag of a cig­a­rette right between those two claus­es.) And every last one of them was exact­ly the sort who was turn­ing in that same retooled vignette in their cap­stone class­es that they showed up with and work­shopped on their first class of the pro­gram as a junior. This is just way too many pre­ten­tious wankers’ “out” when it comes to apply­ing their ass to the chair and doing some god­damn work. And I just fuck­ing HATE that it might be tempt­ing sin­cere and ded­i­cat­ed writ­ers into los­ing a valu­able habit. So if you can’t write, think about writ­ing. If you have a choice, though, pick the actu­al writ­ing.

Also, this is not “I had a pass­ing thought about my writ­ing ear­li­er today, so now I’m good.” You want to actu­al­ly spend 10–15 min­utes con­sid­er­ing word choic­es and ele­ments of craft. Con­sid­er a char­ac­ter arc. Think about how exact­ly your set­ting could sub­tly rein­force your theme. Think about how to have emo­tion­al and per­son­al stakes in your cli­max instead of just exter­nal ones.

But seri­ous­ly, actu­al­ly writ­ing is bet­ter.

Fig­ure out EXACTLY why you like writ­ing that you like: One of the rea­sons lit­er­a­ture majors and cre­ative writ­ing majors spend about 90% of their time in the exact same class­es is because the “close read­ing” of lit­er­a­ture and the “how did the author make me feel this way” of cre­ative writ­ing are basi­cal­ly the same skill set––you get down into the guts of the sen­tence struc­ture and spe­cif­ic word choice and see what made that mean­ing hap­pen.

For a casu­al read­er, it’s fine to just read some­thing and sigh wist­ful­ly. (Such beau­ty. Much prose. Wow!) Who amongst us has­n’t pressed Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture to their chest in des­per­ate want­i­ng? Well, actu­al­ly I haven’t but what­e­vaw­hoo­dles. How­ev­er, to read “as a writer” means to pause when a pas­sage takes your breath away,  take a moment to look at exact­ly what moved you, and THEN ASK HOW? How is it doing what it’s doing? Is it the lan­guage? If so, which spe­cif­ic words? Is it the sound it makes in your head? Is it the imagery? Is it the sen­tence con­struc­tion? Or maybe the way long and short sen­tences weave togeth­er? Con­scious­ly notice what is going on. Unlock its secrets. Let that author teach you their tricks. Be the ready stu­dent, and the mas­ter that is that writer will reach across space and maybe even time and give you your very own pri­vate writ­ing tutor­ing ses­sion. Read con­scious­ly.

Prac­tice out­side your com­fort zone, but also prac­tice writ­ing that plays to your strengths: I love writ­ing dia­logue, and real­ly hate try­ing to write about FEELINGS. So I often pause when I read good descrip­tions of feel­ings (above) and pay atten­tion to that. I try to emu­late it in prompts or when I’m writ­ing on some draft.

How­ev­er, when I’m writ­ing for pub­li­ca­tion (espe­cial­ly a stretch goal pub­li­ca­tion and not a “safe” pub­li­ca­tion), I TEND to focus more on dia­logue because I want to go where I’m strong. Con­sid­er some of the writ­ing you do like prac­tic­ing for a sport. If you suck at speed but are super good at endurance, you def­i­nite­ly want prac­tice ses­sions to include speed drills so you work on that weak­ness and get bet­ter. How­ev­er, in a com­pe­ti­tion with your crosstown rivals, you’ll want to play to your endurance as much as you can and avoid sit­u­a­tions requir­ing raw speed.

Start wher­ev­er (begin­ning or maybe not): Per­haps the weird­est thing about start­ing writ­ers is they know but still refuse to accept that they’re absolute­ly NOT going to sit down and write their mag­num opus book from begin­ning to end and then just go “clean up the gram­mar.“

They know it, but they still don’t.…like.….GROK it. They still insist on a con­tigu­ous expe­ri­ence and have the hard­est time mak­ing cuts. It’s okay to sit down and write the ONE scene you keep think­ing about, even if it’s near the end or even if it’s just float­ing around and you’re not sure when it will fit in. Just get it out. Per­haps it’s future fod­der, but maybe it’s just prac­tice. But the like­li­hood is as you start to get THAT scene out, that fuck­ing loop in your head will stop, and sud­den­ly you’ll be think­ing of ANOTHER scene. By the time you have fin­ished writ­ing scene 4, scene 13, and scene 22, you’ve prob­a­bly thought of scene 7, 3, and 12. Then you can work back­wards, side­ways, upside down, or what­ev­er timey wimey way you want.

Writ­ing is a recur­sive thought process because it is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for you to write faster than you think. You will have ideas as you write, and some of them will be real­ly good.

Rou­tine!: Try to devel­op a dai­ly rou­tine in as much as that is pos­si­ble for you, even if (or per­haps espe­cial­ly if) that rou­tine involves a lot of rest and relax­ation. It might be coun­ter­in­tu­itive at first, but the more sort of…BORING your out­side life is, the more your cre­ative life tends to flour­ish. That does­n’t mean you can’t go on a vaca­tion or some­thing. It means you embrace as much rou­tine as you can. (Maybe you even wake up ear­ly and punch out a few min­utes before head­ing over to Dis­ney­land.) If you can come to the page at the same time every day, it’s going to turn your cre­ativ­i­ty up to eleven. That’s just the way our brains work. There are options for those who sim­ply don’t have the life that fos­ters rou­tine, but get­ting as close as pos­si­ble to one is the bet­ter choice.

Treat your­self well: We treat our brains like they’re these psy­chic enti­ties that live on oth­er planes of exis­tence that can only be reached by astral pro­jec­tion from the psi-vor­tex­es with­in our skulls, but our brains are right there with us not get­ting enough sleep, hurt­ing from stress, and feel­ing kind of over­loaded after that triple cheese­burg­er with greasy fries and a shake. Exer­cise a lit­tle (if you can). Eat decent­ly (if you can). Drink enough water. Take your meds (if you can). Your brain is an organ. It’s pret­ty awe­some, but it has nev­er NOT been a part of your body.

Trust the process––no, REALLY: This one might be the hard­est for start­ing writ­ers. Half the rea­son they sit frozen at their open­ing sen­tence is because some­where inside they don’t actu­al­ly believe that they’ll end up chang­ing every­thing. They want to nail it on the first attempt.

You’re going to have to write many drafts. You’re going to need peer review. You’re going to need to change some stuff.  You’re not the cho­sen one who won’t need to rewrite your book and make huge changes. You’re not the spe­cial snowflake who won’t get some harsh feed­back. You’re not the mes­si­ah of writ­ing who won’t have to prac­tice for years. The process is long, messy, and some­times real­ly painful, but the less you trust it, iron­i­cal­ly, the more it gets longer, messier, and even MORE painful.

Do peer review: A spe­cial shoutout to the part of the process peo­ple tend to trust the least. It’s gonna sting. You won’t like it at first. You’re bril­liant and why can’t they see that? Seri­ous­ly, they did­n’t notice that thing you did? Who are these clowns any­way? But you have to get you some, and even more impor­tant­ly you have to GIVE you some. In the get­ting, you will see all the things you think you’re doing well that you’re not. You’ll learn what you need to work on. In the giv­ing, you’ll learn more about how to make your prose delib­er­ate and con­scious and the most com­mon mis­takes to be wary of in your own writ­ing.

Read this blog: No, I’m not kid­ding. That’s why I’m here. I write a blog about writing––maybe you’ve noticed. Giv­en that this is lit­er­al­ly what I do for a liv­ing, and I make enough to not die, I can’t rec­om­mend me enough. Poke around. Put your feet up. Try the roast­ed veg­etable polen­ta I just made for lunch. There’s LOTS of advice here: writ­ing prompts, craft advice, many many ques­tions for the mail­box. You can’t avoid hard work by read­ing a blog, but some­times I can point out a pit­fall or a short­cut and save you some time and frus­tra­tion.

Okay, fine…it does­n’t have to be me.

You can find a blog LIKE this one. Or real­ly any delib­er­ate writ­ing advice. 

The point is that you prob­a­bly don’t want to just write while sequestered away. You’ll make the same mis­takes over and over again. Yes, you will get bet­ter, but your learn­ing curve will leave a lot to be desired. You want to prac­tice (as much as you can) but also try to make your progress delib­er­ate. A self-taught writ­ing expert isn’t quite the anom­aly that a self-taught con­cert pianist might be, but both prob­a­bly could have saved them­selves hun­dreds of hours of prac­tice back at the begin­ning if they’d had some­one show them a bet­ter way to do the basics.

For the would-be work­ing writer or the ambi­tious hob­by­ist who dreams of one day “mak­ing it,” there is no advice BETTER than “write every day,” but there is a bit of advice OTHER than “write every day.” I hope this helps. While it is like­ly to be a lot slow­er if not com­bined with the dai­ly part, it may even get you where you want to go.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.