You might not know what I’m talking about when I mention the importance of specificity. I was deliberately being vague in that introduction (LOOK AT ME, I’M BEING IRONIC), but via the power of these specific examples, you’ll know exactly what I mean (I’M A GENIUS, IT’S ALL COMING TOGETHER).

Admittedly, the following examples are so far away form each other, they’d never, ever coincidentally meet down the pub, but the purpose of this is not to draw direct comparisons between the two. Instead, think of these as two separate examples. Got it? Good.

P!NK

Do you like P!nk? Does she actually spell her name like that? I can’t remember, but whatever, it’s not important (I checked, she doesn’t). The important thing is, if you do like her you might want to prepare to un-fan her in Facebook. Get Facebook up in another tab ready.

I had my iPod Touch on shuffle the other day, and what should come up but one of Pink’s songs, Family Portrait. I don’t know how it got there. I suspect it was on a compilation of some kind. Anyway, I was listening to this and thinking, “I’ve never liked this song, but it’s even worse than I remember it. A child could write this – it’s so simplistic!”

And it is, but I quickly checked myself. Simplicity in itself is no bad thing. If you can get an idea across simply, it usually means you’re doing a lot right. No, simplicity was not the problem here, so what was it? Let’s take a look at some of the lyrics, shall we?

"If I shout them, maybe no one will notice how bad my lyrics are! Also, a trapeze act!"

Mamma, please stop crying
I can’t stand the sound.
Your pain is painful,
And it’s tearing me down.
I hear glasses breaking
As I sit up in my bed.
I told God you didn’t mean
Those nasty things you said.

Family Portrait, Pink

Ugh. Okay, let’s ignore the horrid “pain is painful” line (I know it’s hard, but stay focussed). This is genuinely the most specific verse I could find and it’s at the beginning of the song. Seriously, it’s all down hill from there. And specificity is the key.

Now, I don’t know if Pink had a terrible childhood, and I don’t mean to be flippant about such things. But from these lyrics, it’s hard to tell. The events she is describing boil down to vague, generic arguments. There’s nothing to convince me that this actually happened and wasn’t dreamed up by a teenage drama class.

There is an argument for keeping things generic in the hope that more people will relate to it, but here’s the thing – vagueness isn’t relatable. It’s difficult to listen to this song and think, “yes, that’s how I felt too,” because there’s nothing specific for the listener to hook on to. In the end it’s just a bunch of poorly chosen words.

Specific examples (or maybe just one, stretched over the whole song) would have made this much more real to the listener, and therefore much more emotive. There is another subject here, which I won’t go into, but is worth thinking about. When the writer gives more of themselves (i.e. dredges up specific, painful memories to share them), however difficult it is, it often ends up as more effective writing.

The Historian

Not long after deleting that song from my iPod, I finally got to the end of The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. This is a Dracula story with a strong emphasis on history (that’s really the hook, and the author does a great job of bringing that to life). It’s a good book actually, if overly long in my opinion. And there’s no sparkly vampires.

Anyway, I was happily reading, thinking I knew where a particular section was going, and I was suddenly blindsided by a detail. This was not a twist, no one suddenly died, it was just a detail. I don’t want to set the scene too much for fear of spoilers, but let’s just say our hero is desperately searching for something they know they are probably not going to find, and out of sympathy, everyone around him has suggested he stop.

Okay, here we go:

In the end, I gave up not because of these reassurances but because of the forest itself, the meteoric steepness of the cliffs, the denseness of the undergrowth, which tore my jacket and trousers as I pushed through it, the terrible size and height of the trees, the silence that surrounded me whenever I stopped moving and groping and stood still for a few minutes.

The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova

Here we are given, not a vague, “in the end I gave up,” or even an easily assumed, “I gave up because of the hopelessness of the situation/because I might actually find what I was looking for/I was too tired to go on”. No, it was the environment.

I want to make the point that specific does not necessarily mean surprising (although it was), so you know I’m not confusing the two. I say specific because the forest, and the character of the forest is specific to this story and what is happening to the character at the time. That sentence (and it is just one sentence amazingly. Proof that disobeying writing rules every now and again is a good thing), says something about the character and the environment that the more generic resolutions could not.

And you really feel it, don’t you, the forest closing in on him whenever he pauses, and it’s the specific details again (the denseness, the tearing, the silence) that make it.

So, to sum up…

specific details are the thing that sells reality to us as a reader/listener/audience. Often surprising and emotive, they help us to empathise or sympathise with a character, and give us a greater sense that we have experienced what they have. Something to bear in mind, and a skill to hone, to be sure.

Image courtesy of Sharon Drummond.

The Easier you can Make Something…

Case in point – my spreadsheet I use to keep track of my writing. I have removed the time tracking on it, because I simply don’t feel that it’s relevant to me anymore – only word count is. Any extraneous fluff in my tracking will make it less easy to do. By trimming it, there is less chance that in a weak moment I think, “I can’t be bothered to write, because that means I’ll have to track it, and that means I have make note of the time or whatever”.

I know it sounds silly that such a small thing might put me off, and maybe it wouldn’t. But the easier something is to do, the more likely you are to do it. So why wouldn’t you make it easier?

Go Tweak Yourself

Another part of the spreadsheet I’ve resolved to tweak is my goals. Or at least, I’m going to review them regularly. I can’t tell for certain that I’m going to tweak them yet, but given how many of my goals became redundant by the end of last year, I imagine I will.

I lot can change over the course of a year. It might not feel like it, but when you stop and think (and I’ll be doing that regularly now!) you notice it. Events in your life can get in the way of your targets, or you may reach them earlier than expected. But as you go through your year’s journey your mindset may also change, and this has an effect on your outlook. You may realise you need to achieve something sooner than you originally thought; some goals may reveal themselves as unimportant after all; you may realise you work better under pressure or with a greater challenge, and ramp up the stakes.

It’s all part of the learning process, and with that in mind, I am actually hoping I feel the need to tweak my goals. It will be a good indication that I’m changing. That’s a key takeaway right there – we’re working on ourselves as much as our writing.

And that’s really the whole point. There are other aspects of your writing life you should not be afraid to tweak, especially in the early stages of your writing journey. Your routine, for example, can probably be improved a great deal. As you grow, you get to know your writing pattern, or you may find that certain environments help you to write better.

As with any system, little improvements here and there can have a big effect. The key here is to make sure you’re tweaking everything to suit you at that time. “You” in this case, is a moving target, so should you feel something can be made better, don’t be afraid to make that change!

Mine was… mixed. On the plus side I did slightly more writing than I did last year. On the minus side, I only did slightly more writing than last year. And I can’t say that I properly finished anything. Boo!

Of course, I know this because of my stats that I’ve been keeping every week. I’ve only just got round to reviewing them (is it a bit late? It is, isn’t it), and in doing so, I’ve also reviewed the list of goals I keep down the side of my numbers.

Yes, I went for the obvious, cheesy image. Not the first time, won't be the last. Image from Swen-Peter Ekkebus.

In doing so, I realised something. I am one unobservant SOB. Okay, I knew that already, but this is really bad – I put number into that stat sheet nearly every day, and this is the first time in months that I’ve even glanced at my goals for the year!

So, what did I discover about my writing success? Some of my goals had shifted over the year, leaving a number of the targets on my sheet irrelevant. About half the information on that list is useless then. But out of the remaining goals, I had actually completed a few of them – go me! But, this is both good and bad.

I had actually completed some early on in the year – good! Had I reviewed this much earlier I could have set some new goals and reached further, but I didn’t – bad!

Also, I came very close to one of my goals, but it looks like I fell at the last hurdle. Again, a review of my targets could have seen me reach that little bit more and put another cross in a box.

The end result of all this? Missed opportunities. Obviously I don’t want this to happen again, so the first change I’ve made to my spreadsheet this year is to have an extra tickbox at the end of every month (I say “month”, but what I mean is four-week period, not calendar months). This is for my regular goal review, and it’s sitting neatly under every four-week block. It should serve as a reminder to check on my targets every month.

Plus, it’s another thing to tick off. We have to take every bit of gratification we can get!

And as a quick checklist, my review will ask the following questions:

• Have I completed any of my goals?
• Am I close to completing any more?
• Have any goals become irrelevant?
• What new goals have become relevant to my writing?

Okay, so that’s a good start anyway, if a little overdue. I might have said this at the end of my last post, but here’s to a good writing year! Stay focussed, peeps!

Just Write!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been writing a passage and have paused – to think of the right word; to work out the order the next few sentences are going to go in; to go back and correct a spelling mistake I’ve seen; to solidify an idea I’ve just had… the list is endless.

And it’s at those times that the rule of “just write” takes a back seat to more pressing concerns. It doesn’t sound like a big deal though does it? And maybe it isn’t. But consider that while you’re pondering the significance of your last comma, other things are going on.

Writing in the flow is a different state of mind to writing deliberately. While you’re being careful about your prose, you are not free to fully explore the story you’re penning. Even a little care means that you’re being constrained in subtle ways that you did not realise.

I have been aware of this for a good few years (or at least I thought I was). I have often advocated freewriting as a method to generate ideas, believing it to be (as the name implies) an access to a less constrained road from mind to fingers.

JUST WRITE!

BUT this has never really, truthfully been applied to my daily writing. Recently though I introduced a word target for my daily train writing. Given my very limited time on the journey, it’s a challenge to meet the word count. This means there is simply no time for pontificating – I race through it as soon quick as I can.

Does this give me the best writing ever? No. It’s no doubt sloppy and will need lots of tidying up.

But what I have found is my usual tendency to try and be concise and measured in my writing is gone. I consider those two elements of my writing voice to be good things, but in the draft stage they are less important.

What replaces this is a willingness to ramble, and to elaborate. I’m adding details that help to build the world. Sure, they probably won’t exist in their ramble, freewritey form in the final draft, but if they can be reduced to a couple of sentences, or broken up and sprinkled in appropriate places, it adds to the texture of the story. All good stuff that might never have been dreamed up otherwise.

So the lesson is.. er.. just write; a lesson I learn over and over again, just like many lessons in writing. You think you now what something means, but then you reach a new level of understanding. It’s all about slowly changing your mindset I guess. I look forward to the next lesson.

So for that person, sorry about that.

Anyway, here we are in that strange place between Christmas and New Year, a perfect time for reminiscing. So I picked out some GMW posts from the year that was 2011, for the pleasure of your reading receptacles:

• Bad Influence
• Journalling Without The Journal?
• Looking at your Earliest Writing
• A New Years Plan
• The People of The Social Network
• Speed Anxiety
• What Game of Thrones can Teach us
• Why Dieting is like Becoming a Writer
• Writers are Superheroes
• Writing with a Baby

So there you have it – some fine posts to spend your new year with! I will see you in 2012, which I’m sure we can make a great writing year for all of us!

Why would you want to do this? Well, there are a few reasons you might want to spend a day or week being a full time writer. For a start, you will get more writing done than you normally would, and really, you don’t need more reasons than that!

This is my Christmas tree! It's so priddy!

But more importantly I think, it enables you to fully understand what being a full time writer means. Because it’s not just about writing all day (from what I can gather ). Sure, there are plenty things that you won’t experience during this experiment – conversations with your agent, or editor; preparing your book for self-publication; counting up your fortune as a famous author (that one was a joke).

You will be thinking about it though, and you will be experiencing part of it, and you know what? This may be the experience that seals the deal for you. You may fall so in love with it that it changes your outlook. Suddenly you find yourself planning your exit strategy, so you can get out of the doldrums and into writing. This could be the holiday that starts it all!

Or you may discover you hate it. Even this limited foray into the deeper world of writing might put you off completely. But this is still incredibly useful information. Imagine if you’d waited until you’d quit your job to discover that!

There is a middle ground of course, which is perhaps more likely than the other outcomes. Writing (we may have established this already) is hard. You may love it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier.

But over the course of the holiday week (or whatever) you can develop strategies to get around these problems. You may discover that you can’t sit down all day – go for a walk, then work that into your routine for the next day. Maybe you write best if you do so in three hour blocks, or half hour sprints – the things you encounter will help you decide how to break up your writing day. This is all good preparation. When the time comes, you may be able to hit the ground jogging, if not running.

Why I haven’t done this so far

You’ve read this blog before, right? You know what’s coming.

I haven’t done this yet, although I think about it every time I take time off work. Then I berate myself for a missed opportunity.

There are a number of things that get in the way of executing this plan. The most obvious one is a lack of discipline, and yes, I am guilty of this. Frankly, as much as I enjoy the sense of achievement and satisfaction of getting writing done, a lot of the time it still feels like work. When I’m taking a break from work, I don’t want to do some more work, even if I would feel better for it afterwards. Sometimes I just want to veg out or play computer games.

Another problem is other people (aren’t they always?) I will often sync my holidays with other people, like, family and stuff. Obviously I can’t arrange this and then disappear for the entire day.

Finally, (and again this is to do with a lack of time), there are other things I need to be doing now that I have the opportunity. Like housework, and those annoying DIY jobs that stack up and never get completed.

In fact, I will often queue up a bunch of jobs to do on days off, and only complete about half of them – writing can quickly disappear off my schedule entirely!

What Might Make it Easier, Then?

So, I’ve been thinking about ways to make this a bit easier, and here are a few suggestions:

Make a plan of your day

Take a little time to think about the kind of things you would be doing as a full time writer. Now look at that list and decide which activities you can do now. You might also want to pick some subjects you can find out about now, if you don’t know about them already – this might form a research slot in the plan of your day.

Some example activities are

• writing new work
• editing a drafted piece
• submitting short work to magazines
• working on a blog, if you have one (if not, you might want to research about that. Then you can get into the whole debate about whether to write a personal blog, a blog about writing, or a blog around the kind of things you write about. Lots to think about.)
• reading – and this might be reading within your genre, reading non-fiction for research, or reading about the process of writing, for example.
• putting yourself out there. I’m being vague here, but the kind of activities I’m thinking about here are internet based, and are about getting involved in the writing community. This means going on social networks, reading other blogs or forums etc. Getting involved as much as possible with the people who are already out there and doing it. Make yourself known to them.

I suggest a good mindmapping session or similar to think up a few others. And they could well be different for everyone. I’ve already mentioned going for a walk for example, but that’s not something everyone will feel is helpful to them.

Once you’ve got your list, fit the activities into your day. I would start with fitting writing new material in your day, followed by editing, then fit everything else around those things. Be sure to think about what breaks you might need as well. You may not be able to do everything every day, so I recommend doing this experiment over several days if you can.

Make sure your working space is ready

You don’t want to be spending your first day/morning/hour even setting up your work space. Make sure you have some time set aside before your holiday to make your workspace writing ready.

prepare people

You probably have other people in your life who might want to spend some time with you, so make them aware of what you would like to do. If this is your significant other, you may have to negotiate and reach a compromise on how much time you spend or when. The important thing is to make clear what is going to happen so they are not demanding your time when you need it most.

And that is all for now, but of course, I’m curious as to what your writing day looks like. Let us all know how you divide your day to get things done. If you’re a full time writer, what does your day look like, and what are your hours like?

I think a big part of the problem is that it’s something done at the last minute, and not a great deal of thought goes into it. It’s like any promise to yourself. Say you had a dream to go bungee jumping. Every month you say to yourself, “I’d love to go bungee jumping – that is a thing I am resolved to do.” But you don’t and the end of the year comes along and you resolve to do it next year. So, what’s changed? Nothing. These things are only going to happen if you make them happen, and promising yourself is only the first step.

Pick it and Break it up!

Seeming as we're making our resolutions early, we can have a party early too, right? Image courtesy of Cedrick Ledesma.

So I would say, rather than making a New Years resolution, make a New Years plan. Start now, not on the first of January. Pick one thing you want to achieve next year, right now. Done it? Good. Now think about the steps you need to take in order to make that come true. Write them down.

I rushed through that a bit, but certainly it can be useful to pick the first thing that comes into your head – that may be the thing that is most important to you. Breaking that down into steps can take a bit longer – you may not know all the steps. All the more reason to start the process now rather than waiting. It will likely only take a small amount of research to discover what’s needed, so do it, and make your plan all the more relevant.

How Long?

Okay, now remember that we have a timeframe here – you have to complete all of these steps by the end of next year. Is there time for that? Estimate how long you think these things will take. Now double it. Don’t poo-poo that by the way. We often overestimate what we can get done in a short space of time (a year) and underestimate what we can do in a longer period of time (like, five years). So, double your estimate, because things almost always take longer than you think. If you complete it quicker than that, well, that’s still a good thing!

Now, is there anything else going on in the year that impacts this? Maybe there is something that directly impacts your deadline, meaning it absolutely has to be done by May, for example. What events might help you reach your goals (like NaNoWriMo). Now look for planned events that are likely to take your attention off this goal, like major birthdays that need planning (or births for that matter), or holidays.

Now, take your steps and slot them around these events as necessary. If possible, aim to complete everything a month or two before your deadline. That way, if you fall behind, you’ve got that extra slack built in to catch up. The alternative is seeing that it’s hopeless and giving up entirely.

At this point you may be looking at your plan and realising that you cannot possibly fit everything in. That may be disheartening, but it’s okay. At least now you know your original goals were unrealistic. Now you can pick somewhere achievable within that list of steps you made. Change getting your novel “completed”, to getting the first draft finished for example.

Finishing Touches

Look your plan over and tweak it if necessary – you may go through a couple of drafts of your New Years Plan before you’re happy with it. What you want to end up with is something that is clear and realistic, so you can look at it and see what stage you need to be at in March, for example.

When it’s finished, put it somewhere you can refer to it often. Write it on a single A4 sheet and pin it above your desk, or write it small so that it fits on a single sheet in your diary. Even better, start making use of an online calendar service like Google Calendar. Here you can add events throughout the year – your steps on the journey to resolution, and add reminders days or weeks in advance that can be emailed or even sent to you via text. Useful, eh!

And finally, don’t forget that your plan is not written in stone. Sometimes unavoidable things will happen to get in your way – none of us know what’s going to happen in that year. That’s why you built a buffer into your plan, so use it. Adjust your plan and see where that puts you. The same goes for when you’re doing particularly well, too.

Do you have any tips for making a New Years Plan? Are you one of those people (I’m assured they do exist) that can make a New Years resolution and simply stick to it? Discuss below!

This fantastic image is entitled "Writer's Block" and comes from Drew Coffman over on Flicker. Click to see more.

Don’t Wait

It’s quite simple really, but I did two things. First, I no longer wait until I have a seat. I write on the train on the way home, and previously I would read or listen to podcasts while I waited for a seat. You can imagine that some days this comes earlier than others, so I did not really have control over when I made a start.

That attitude also gives me a new raft of excuses not to write, by the way. I can wait for a seat I like, rather than just any seat. If I’m over halfway through my journey, I can decide there’s really no point trying to write, as I won’t get enough done (always false of course – any progress is worth it). I can mix it up, too – “Oh, I’ve finally got the seat I wanted, but I’ll just get to the end of this chapter I’m reading. Well, look at that, now I’m too far into my journey! Drat!” That’s a 3 x procrastination multiplier right there!

No more! Now I only wait until there’s space on the filthy floor by the doors. I’m not proud – I can sit on the floor and write in the dirt!

Little Hits

And the other thing? That bloody game (and this is the last time I mention it, I promise) The Binding of Isaac (again, be aware, some people may be offended by this game)that caused me so much distraction before is now being put to good use. I admit, I’m probably better off deleting it off my hard drive altogether, but last week at least it worked as a little reward.

You want something that feels like a tiny perk – a little hit to finish off your day. That’s what that game can deliver, even if it’s only for five minutes, because every level genuinely feels like a fresh challenge. So I made the decision that I would be able to play it, but only if I’d reached a certain word count (a word count that brings me past my average over the course of a week by the way).

That motivates me to start sooner and get on the floor, and also puts a satisfying full-stop on my train journey. You might use something else. If you don’t mind reading in short bursts, you can do that for example. Chocolate might help some people.

It Still Takes Discipline

What the title says. It’s a cliché, but there aren’t any silver bullets for your writing werewolf. Just keep pumping ordinary bullets into it daily and eventually it’ll go down (or something. Some phrases aren’t meant to be taken to their natural conclusion, clearly). So far, so good.

But enough about me and my overpriced train journeys, what about your writing? Do you have any treats you give yourself at the end of a session? Or maybe you have a special way of making sure you just get on with it? You know where the comments section is!

I referenced this study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from University College London last week. While it talks about how long it takes to form a habit, there is not a lot of detail about how you can make a habit stick. Here are some common sense tips that can help however.

Context

To reinforce a habit it’s best to perform the behaviour in the same context. As the association grows it’s possible that the context itself can trigger the behaviour. Like it or not, we’re all just salivating dogs! With something as complicated as writing (as opposed to something more basic, like sleep or, I don’t know, going to the toilet or something), this is unlikely to happen, but using context can certainly smooth the way.

Here are some ways to control the context of your writing sessions:

• Same time each day
• Same location
• Listen to music (maybe even the same piece), or perhaps ensure your environment is always silent.

Reduce Distractions

As attractive as writing might be to your psyche, there are always other actions vying for your attention.

• Remove other low resistance actions. These are behaviours that are easy to fall into, like browsing the internet. Turn it off!
• Make sure you have everything you need around you (glass of water, all your writing equipment). That way you don’t have to keep getting up to see to these needs. I’d draw the line at having a bottle to pee in though.

Reduce Resistance

Now that low resistance behaviours are out of the way, you could go some steps to ensure that writing is as low resistance an activity as possible.

• Make sure your writing space is always set up, ready for work. If you feel you have to get things ready before you start, you’re less likely to want to start.
• Finish in the middle of a paragraph, or even sentence. An old trick, this. Next time you start, it feels a lot less like starting and a lot more like carrying on, which is much easier.
• Make sure other people know when you will be writing. It’s much harder to go and do something if people are expecting other things from you. You could also add this as a way of removing distractions – that “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door should be a clear message.

Of Course I’m a Hypocrite

Naturally, I do all of the things above, except for when I don’t. My writing space is always the train during the week. Granted, this takes care of context (I actually do put music on most of the time, depending on my mood and the mood of what I’m writing. Often it’s still ambient music like Treefingers by Radiohead, just to cut out other distractions).

Distractions are still a problem. I should never have installed The Binding of Isaac on my laptop. I had just bought the game and wanted to see what it was like, honest!

Since my baby boy came along I still haven’t really sorted out my writing at the weekend. The dining room table is constantly cluttered now, which means I need a better writing space, which means cleaning my “office” up on the top floor. And, well, it does rather look like a bomb’s hit it. If the explosive in question was a paper cluster bomb. Everything else kind of falls apart until that’s done.

What about you folk in internet land? What’s your experience of writing on a regular basis? Has anyone got any tips to reinforce that habit?

In other news, I’ve just seen that this is the 150th post on Getmewriting.com! Yay us!

Studies on Habit Forming

Have you ever heard that idea that it takes 21 days to form a habit? I’ve heard that a few times (although I forgot the exact figure before I Googled it), but after a little digging it seems likely that this is a myth. Most articles I found simply stated it as a fact without reference to any sources, or simply said, “experts agree,” which is almost always code for, “I couldn’t be bothered to find out,” or “I’m making this crap up.”

I couldn’t even find a definitive source for the 21 days, although this article has a suggestion. Maybe it’s one of those things that got made up and stuck, like swallowing spiders in your sleep.

So how long does it take to form a habit? I couldn’t find a definitive answer there either, and it seems we don’t really know. Most of the articles I found referred back to the study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from University College London in 2009 mentioned in the Psyblog article above. Here, the magic number is 66 days, or two months! A lot longer than the supposed answer above. Notice that 66 days is an average though – it depends on what the action is that you have to perform.

Another conclusion of the study was that missing the occasional day did not seem to make a huge amount of difference to the overall results. Those who stuck with it more early on however, stood a better chance of making the habit stick. Obviously, as reassuring as this is, there must be a line where missing another day will have a negative impact on your mission.

Habit Resistance

One thing I’ve never understood about the 21 days theory is that it doesn’t take account of how easy the action is to perform or the desire of an individual to perform it. It seems obvious, but some habits catch hold more readily than others. It’s incredibly easy for me to form a habit of playing The Binding Of Isaac (warning about that link – offence may be caused) on the train home, but a lot more difficult to form (or even continue) one that involves me writing.

Sticking with this example, I guess that’s because playing a game is more immediately rewarding. Don’t get me wrong, I do get a sense of achievement (even after writing only 300 words on the train), knowing that I’ve been disciplined enough to do it and that I’m a little closer to reaching my goals for that week. But that doesn’t stand much of a chance against a game designed to make every minute rewarding.

In fact, with enough data, you could probably come up with a formula for habit forming that takes into account the size and frequency of reward and the difficulty in completing the behaviour. We might call the “Habit Resisitance”. That in turn might even give us a rough picture of how long it might take to form such a habit.

Make it Stick

But for now, it’s good to know that if you aim for 66 days of writing every day, you stand a good chance of getting that behaviooiur to stick and become almost automatic. I certainly know from my own experience that lapses in my routine make it harder to get back into the “habit”, but if regular, writing becomes easier and easier. It’s not truly felt automatic yet, and perhaps this is the reason – too many breaks and not a long enough run. Something I will remedy.