One of the most powerful actions you can take to establish writing as a habit in your life is to carve out time to write every day for at least 30 days, and make a commitment to write every day for that entire 30 days. Even if it’s just 15 minutes a day, if you make the short-term commitment to do this, you will soon have a deep understanding of a very important concept: there is power in daily writing!
Daily writing leads to success, no ifs, ands, or buts. That’s because it forces you to focus like a laser on your work in progress and hone your writing skills whether you feel like writing or not. This in turn influences your subconscious mind to help you start thinking of yourself as a writer (or reinforces that belief) and that in turns affects your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward writing. Writing begets writing. Daily writing begets writing success.
Success is predicted by how you think, feel, and behave toward your writing goals. A person who has success-oriented thoughts and who feels confident in her abilities will naturally take daily actions that bring about her desired outcomes. She will feel enthusiastic, motivated, and dedicated to those outcomes because she thinks, feels, and acts her way toward reaching them, and she does the things every day necessary to achieve success.
This is the case with writing. An aspiring author who thinks positive thoughts and believes in herself will touch her craft daily, which will generate the enthusiasm and motivation to set goals. She will then cultivate the dedication required to take steps to reach those goals over a long period of time. She will write every day or take action every day toward her writing dream. She will act in methodical, self-disciplined ways that bring about desire outcomes. She will think, feel, and act in ways that stimulate enthusiasm, motivation, and dedication for achieving success as a writer as she defines it.
You can be that writer. Even if you have gotten off-track with your efforts to become a successful writer, it’s never too late to start again! Through daily writing, you can generate the enthusiasm, motivation, and dedication needed to work toward your long-term writing goals. You can create for yourself what is known in psychology as a positive self-fulfilling prophecy, which is a belief system that sets you up to succeed!
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Kelly L. Stone (www.AuthorKellyLStone.com) is the author of a women’s fiction novel, GRAVE SECRET (Mundania Press, 2007) which Romantic Times Book Reviews called “powerful” and “well-written.” She is also the author of the TIME TO WRITE series for writers: TIME TO WRITE: No Excuses, No Distractions, No More Blank Pages (Adams Media, 2008), THINKING WRITE: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind (Adams Media, 2009) and LIVING WRITE: The Secret to Bringing Your Craft Into Your Daily Life (Adams Media, 2010). She is a sought after keynote speaker and workshop presenter at writing conferences across the country and offers online classes, critiques, and coaching services to writers. Contact her at Kelly@AuthorKellyLStone.com.
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Kelly--Forming that daily habit of writing IS crucial. It gets our brain into that groove and--just like our muscles--the more consistently we work our brain, the more fit it will be.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. It's a great reminder.
As a practicing engineer, I wrote over lunch every day for years. Finished a couple of novels that way. Now that I've retired to write fiction "full time" (which doesn't necessarily mean 8 hours/day when you're retired), the daily discipline made it easy to transition.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people's reaction over the years has been, "Oh, I could never do that. You have to be inspired to write." But I can honestly say that the difference between a writer and a dabbler is a daily writing practice. After only a few weeks into it, I could transition out of engineering and back into the world of the novel in just a minute or two. The mind is an amazing tool -- don't sell yours short.
I've started a blog of my own in support of my writing now; if you're interested in seeing how far I've gotten in the process, check out http://rustyrhoadblog.com/
Right (or write) on, Kelly! And I find if I miss a day or two - which can happen - it is difficult to get back into the routine. Best advice - don't miss a day! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reminder, Kelly. My WIP can wait much too often these days!
ReplyDelete