Sometimes, this might lead to stretches where I write every morning. I work with the reality of my life that week to squeeze in as much writing as I can get away with, in the most practical manner. When I’m working on a book, I instead approach each week as its own scheduling challenge.
I don’t want to provide my brain any examples of a strategy related to my writing that’s failing. In my experience as a writer with a day job, I’ve found it’s crucial to avoid rigid writing schedules. When the specific plan fails, the resulting lack of motivation infects the general goal as well, and your writing project flounders. The problem for the would-be writer is that the brain does not necessarily distinguish between your vague and abstract goal, to write a novel, and the accompanying specific plan, to write every day, which you’re using to accomplish this goal. As I’ve argued before, the human brain is driven, in large part, by its need to assess plans: providing motivation to act on good plans, and reducing motivation (which we experience as procrastination) to act on flawed plans.
It provides evidence to your brain that your plan to write every day will not succeed. This slip-up, however, has big consequences. An early meeting at work, a back-up on the subway, an afternoon meeting that runs long - any number of common events will render writing impractical on some days. If you’re not a full-time writer, this is essentially unavoidable. Here’s what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up. In this post, I want to explain why this is true - as this explanation provides insight into the psychology of accomplishing big projects in any field. This strategy will, in fact, reduce the probability that you finish your writing project. Having published four books myself, here’s my opinion: If you’re not a full time writer (like King and Lamott), this is terrible advice. Anne Lamott proposes something similar in her guide, Bird by Bird (she recommends sitting down to write at roughly the same time every day). Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On Writing (he follows a strict diet of 1,000 words a day, six days a week).
If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice.
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