writing: the inconsistent habit
In an ideal world, I’d sit down to write every Monday evening at 6 pm. I’d hesitate for perhaps a minute or two, but within my allocated 1.5 hours, I’d have filled my page with the requisite minimum 1000 words of creative writing that I had promised myself. My writing habit would gain a self-nourishing momentum, and I would be a fulfilled and prolific and habitual writer.
In today’s very far-from-ideal world, however, I sit down to write every other day, at whatever time I can squeeze into the air between densely packed work sessions. I have about thirty to forty minutes to write what I can eke out of my tired brain. My writing habit has the momentum of a flat ball of dough, so when I take stock of my gallery I find myself noticing how many more empty spaces there are than original works.
At certain points in my life, when this inconsistency was at its strongest, I would look at my writing with guilt and a sense of displacement. I’d ask myself increasingly despondent questions: Can I call myself a writer if I never write? Is my writing even good anymore? What if I start again, and it’s terrible? (This last question was particularly scary and stopped me from starting again for a very long time.)
The ugly truth for many writers (including me) is that we fall in and out of writing habits more frequently than we actually write. We compare ourselves to other writers who are “more regular” (and therefore better). And the longer we go telling ourselves we’re terrible for not writing more, the more we believe it and the harder it can be to start again.
So what do we do?
The first step is to stop telling ourselves mean things.
Writing inconsistently does not make us terrible writers (or even terrible people). We are simply doing what we can (writing something) with the resources we have (limited time, energy, and motivation).
The second step is to write something easy.
Any time you go long periods without writing, the following simple exercises can help you fall back into it without needing to torture yourself for new ideas.
- Write something short.
- Write something true.
If you’re feeling up to a slightly bigger challenge but you’re still feeling creatively stuck, here are a couple more things you can do. Each exercise can hone a particular skill.
- Rewrite something you've already written. (Precise writing)
- Summarise somebody else’s writing. (Concise writing)
- Write a description of a location while incorporating historical facts about it. (Researched writing)
The third step is to finish with a flourish.
As inconsistent writers, starting a new piece of writing can be especially frustrating if we don’t think we’ll be able to complete it in a single sitting. So “finish” it. Even if what you’re working on feels incomplete when your writing session is over, find a natural point at which you can end your sentence and then draw a line under it. (Or write “fin” — whatever will help you get the sense that the piece is done.) If you need to go back to it at a later point to add to it, you can. But for now, you have one more original work for your gallery.