How to Create Writing Habits that Stick: Applying Atomic Habits
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We’re fifteen days into 2024, and I bet most of us still feel the freshness, motivation, and excitement of all the opportunities to come … but sadly, experience teaches that motivation only lasts so long.
There will be days—in the not-so-distant future—where we just flat don’t want to do x, y, or z. When we just wish it could be easy, not so much damn work. When tax time hits, or the kids get sick, or the roof leaks, or the basement floods, along with all the other overwhelms of life. When we feel like we don’t have the bandwidth for one more thing!
So what keeps us from giving up and doing the easier, softer thing vs. showing up to write a story we’re struggling with?
It’s not motivation. That shit is temporary. It might be determination born of desire or even spite; that can take you a long way, but even determination can fizzle.
What keeps us in the writing game is our habits.
Cultivating good habits in service of the changes we want to make and the people we want to become.
That’s the secret sauce.
So how do we do that?
I’m going to lean hard on James Clear’s Atomic Habits.
This is a book I read annually or at least skim. It’s based on the philosophy that improving a tiny bit every day in service to your goals is the way to make lasting change vs. making 180-degree flips and hoping that you’ll have enough moxie to make it stick.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” Atomic Habits page 16.
Let that statement sink in for a minute.
Whatever you repeat is what you get more of, whether you like that result or not.
Look at your writing habits now, then fast forward about ten years. Are you going to be happy with that result?
What if you found a way to take small, repeatable actions every day in service to your writing goals? Where would you be in ten years if you went with that approach?
“Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.” Atomic Habits, page 18.
I like to say writing progress is made in inches, not miles. Often, I’ll encourage my clients to forget about writing the book, forget writing the next scene, and focus only on writing the next sentence or the next paragraph. That’s all they need to do to win that day: just write one sentence. (I have to thank V.E. Schwab for this tactic).
Recently, one of my clients shared that she side-stepped imposter syndrome and self-doubt by setting the bar at one sentence a day. If she wrote one sentence, she called it a win.
Now, many times, she wrote much more than a single sentence, but on the days when life happened, she could still manage that one sentence and felt accomplished. It gave her a feel-good hit. After a couple of weeks, she found she was going to bed excited to write the next day and woke up feeling inspired to come to her story!
This client just drafted 20K over the Christmas holiday, so I’d say this ideology is working pretty damn well!
Atomic Habits make a similar point: “Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.”
How to cultivate good writing habits:
Atomic Habits recommends creating a specific, actionable goal, then forgetting about the goal completely and focusing only on the systems that will bring you closer.
I couldn’t agree more.
Cultivating good writing habits will help you stay in it when motivation wanes and become a finisher of novels, not just a starter, and maximize your efficiency and desire to keep doing it.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Atomic Habits page 27.
Atomic Habits lays out four simple rules of behavior change grounded in our neurobiological feedback loops: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.
Make it (the cue) obvious.
Make it (the craving) attractive.
Make it (the response) easy.
4. Make it (the reward) satisfying.
The 4 Rules of Atomic Habits applied to writers who want to build lasting writing habits:
Make The Fact You Want To Write Obvious: Cue
Behavior change begins with an awareness of what is currently taking place and assessing if that is benefiting you. So observe your current system, and if you don’t have one, celebrate. This is an opportunity to design one that works for you!
Notice what’s working and what doesn’t. When do you come to the page? What do you do right before then? What about after? How do you feel when you sit down to write? What are your thoughts? Are these processes, feelings, and thoughts serving you? How do you want to change your behavior?
The steps:
Set your new intentions based on the behavior change you wish to embody.
Plan out your new intentions before you take action. Write or state your intentions the day before. Example: Tomorrow, I will open my laptop at (TIME) in (LOCATION).
Create an environment you want to be in and link your writing time with a habit you already have in place to strengthen the cue that it’s time to write.
Examples: Environment- Quiet and cozy with music I like. Building on other habits: After I make my morning coffee, I will open my Word document.
If you are like some of my clients who feel anxious or beat themselves up before they write, can you notice your thoughts and decide to think differently? Can you intentionally state the truth of the situation or the feeling you want to have? Can you cultivate the relationship with the writing you want to have?
Make Your Writing Time Attractive: Craving
Anticipating that a behavior will be rewarding is half the battle of showing up time and time again. So, design a reward system that works for you.
The steps:
Find a carrot that entices you and link it to the habit you want to form. Example: After I get my morning coffee (current habit), I will open my Word document (the habit I need to build), and then I will take a sip of my coffee (reward!)
Be with others: The importance of being part of a community of like-minded individuals who get you, support you, and strive for the same outcomes as you cannot be overstated. Please find your tribe.
Create the mood for the behavior you want to practice. Do something you enjoy before you begin your writing session. For me, that’s a sip of coffee. For you, it might be lighting a favorite candle, adjusting your pillow into the perfect position, or putting on your favorite soundtrack.
Make coming to the page easy: Response
We are energy-conserving machines, biologically programmed to take the path of least resistance; the easier it is to write, the more likely we will show up!
Forming new habits requires frequency; the easier it is to get there, the more often we are to repeat it.
The steps:
Lower the expectations of yourself and your writing. Start small and don’t do too much too fast.
Set the goal for the session low, say one-sentence or one paragraph. That’s all you need to do. It’s enough, but often, it will snowball into more.
Build the muscle of showing up first; then, once you’ve mastered that, up the bar. Some action is better than no action.
Remove temptations and distractions. This could be turning off your notifications, silencing your phone, leaving it in another room, or finding a quiet place to write (like your car—yeah, I’ve done it many times). Consider distraction-minimizing tools like Cold Turkey Writer, which will block you from doing anything on your computer by writing.
Make it easy to come back to the page and the idea for the next time. Stop before you’re ready, mid-sentence even. Leave yourself a breadcrumb trail of what happens next in the scene.
Make writing a satisfying experience: Reward
All humans are programmed to love instant gratification, so use your biology to your advantage.
The steps:
Give yourself a goodie at the end of the writing session. It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as you associate it with pleasure.
Post your progress in your community, take a picture, and post it to your social; make a big fat check mark in your planner that you did what you said you were going to do!
Let people join you in celebrating your effort!
Take a minute at the end of each writing session to celebrate the fact you are a working writer!
Takeaways for building better writing habits with Atomic Habits.
We get what we repeat.
Make your intentions to write obvious.
Make the idea of writing tantalizing by creating a reward system and an environment you crave being in. Take a page from Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic and have an affair with your writing.
Make the writing easy by starting small, lowering expectations, and building the habit of showing up first before you move on to bigger writing goals.
One sentence per writing session works!
Make the writing satisfying by acknowledging your progress and giving yourself an instant reward!
If you fall off the wagon, it’s okay. Just get back on as soon as possible.
Progress, not perfection.
Some action is better than no action at all.
So when writing motivation dwindles, bet on your habits, writer! Here’s to building better writing habits and becoming the writers we want to be.
