How to Start a Writing Practice
I've thought a lot about writing practices. The strange thing about my writing practice, of course, is that it didn't start as a writing practice. It started as a sharing practice (you can read that story elsewhere).
But it is a writing practice, nonetheless. And before I had a writing practice, I had thought about them.
I had heard people - particularly Seth Godin - talking about the power of a writing practice. Godin says things like: if you write how you think, then when you practice writing, you are practising thinking. If you write how you speak, then when you practice writing, you practice speaking.
He says: start a practice. Post your writing anonymously somewhere if it's too much to share it under your name. And after two weeks, you'll probably be so proud of it that you'll want to share it.
He says it affects you outside of the practice. If you write daily, like Godin does (and has for decades) then every day, in the back of your mind, your subconscious is working on ideas, highlighting thoughts, preparing you. If you know you're going to write something, then the subconscious is going to get you ready (doing what I learned from Adam Grant's book Originals is creative procrastination).
I had heard clients and colleagues tell me about the impact of Julia Cameron's morning pages writing practice. The processing power of just writing and its impact on our emotional and mental states.
I had used the ideas from Steven Pressfield, about turning pro, to batter through Resistance in my life. That the power of sitting down to work on something creative like you would on any day job was the transformational move (rather than, say, 'waiting for inspiration to strike' - as Somerset Maugham said, 'I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.') .
And then I started my sharing practice, which was also a writing practice. And I found out all of that was true.
It changed how I think, how I speak. It made me more creative, collecting ideas for future pieces. It helped me process mentally and emotionally. And it grew my discipline, habit-forming and ability to do the things that I really want to do. That last one - knowing I can keep going - was more transformational than I expected.
All, a little, by accident. Although... was it really an accident?
I've had a writing practice for six and a half years. One article, 12-minutes (or about that, when it was on the train), every week. I would guess something of the order of 200,000 words written in that practice.
I'd thought about writing practices a lot before I started one. And I've thought about them a lot more since, especially when you take into account four books and 100 podcast appearances talking, in one way or another, about this topic.
If you want to start a writing practice, here are some things to think about:
Make the rhythm stick, and make it work for you. Godin writes daily. Cameron recommends daily, too. But weekly works for me. The rhythm, in the long-term, will be the transformative part of a practice. And it will engage your creativity. In my rhythm, I have flexibility. It doesn't matter when in the week I write, but I write every week. Some people want something different. More rigidity might serve you. But above all, do what you need to make the rhythm stick.
Doing something, imperfectly, regularly, is better than doing nothing. 12 minutes is a good amount of time to write. The first few won't be good, but you'll get better as you practice at writing a complete article in 12 minutes. I certainly have. If you want 20 minutes or 30, great. But make sure it's something you can do on a rhythm, a practice you can maintain. And you need less time than you think.
Collect ideas somewhere. Once you start this practice, have somewhere - a voice recorder app, a scrappy piece of paper, a note on your phone - to put ideas when you have them. Pressfield likes the voice recorder, because there's nothing like hearing your own voice tell you about a great idea you've forgotten. From the start, make it easier to write by having a list you can look at when you sit down, and then choose from the list by asking, which of these ideas is most interesting to me today?
Post it publicly if you can. The power of sharing is enormous. It taught me that creating isn't really life or death, no matter how much it feels like that. It helped me accept myself, and it created so many connections and so much abundance in my life.
Focus on the practice. Number of readers, likes, comments, doesn't matter. The 80/20 analysis on writing is: if you write something, proof it once and post it, that gets you WAY more than 80% of the impact. And that's way less than 20% of the work. If you faff with masses of editing and trying to get people to read it, that's the 80% effort that gets you at most another 20% impact.
Writing will change you, and will change others.
It's time to practice.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Read the archive of the 12-minute blog here.
The 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, is out now!