Establishing a Writing Practice
Shoulder monsters and all.
Since January marks the new year for many folks, I thought it’d be a great time to talk about getting a writing practice going.
Establishing a writing practice is an ongoing activity. The effort it demands from you never really lessens.
Sometimes after a house is built, it blows away in a tornado. You might build a great writing practice but then something unexpected and unwelcome happens—an injury, the death of a loved one, financial hardship—and it gets demolished.
Sometimes a house disintegrates from neglect. You might establish a writing practice but the other demands of life just keep chipping away at it, inserting themselves as priorities, until there’s nothing left of the original practice.
The main effort of building a writing practice does not lie in setting up a schedule or a space to write in. Most of the effort actually lies in repeatedly accessing your courage.
Courage to keep believing in your creative voice.
Courage to roll with your many perceived failures.
And courage to prioritize an activity that doesn’t seem valued by society, when there are so many other things you could be doing that are valued by society. (And by valued, I mean financially.)
So don’t kid yourself that all you have to do is set aside a block of time in your day and you’ll write. You also have to muster—each and every time—the energy, the will, and the courage to prioritize, focus, concentrate, and trust yourself.
It’s a huge task, so if you have trouble maintaining a writing practice, that’s understandable! Huge tasks are demanding, and deplete your resources, and exhaust you.
But the rewards are huge! Following projects through, writing books, connecting with readers, expressing what you need to express during your short time on this planet—these are incredible experiences.
Why write?
I don’t mean “why is writing valuable.”
Rather, I mean why should you write on any particular day of your life, versus any other day? You’ll probably ask yourself this question, and you might not be able to find a good answer.
So here’s an answer that works: Because you must.
In other words, treat your writing like a job.
On any given day, write because you have to show up—just like you would to a job. You don’t always want to do it, or even feel capable of doing it. Sometimes you love it, sometimes you hate it. But as with a job, how you feel about it doesn’t really factor in at all. You still just have to show up. It’s not up for debate.
Quick tips:
Try having an “accountabili-buddy.” This is someone who will know if you don’t show up to work as a writer. It helps it feel more like a true job if someone is expecting you to show up. They may or may not be a writer themselves. Maybe they need help showing up to their own endeavor, and you can mutually help each other out.
Leverage the power of peer pressure. Purposely put yourself in a situation where everyone else is doing it (so maybe you should too). Try in-person meet-up groups and online chat rooms for co-writing.
Where and when to write?
I’ve talked before about writing in the in-between, wherever you are and with whatever’s handy, even if it isn’t the ideal “quiet room with a desk.”
This can go beyond just seizing random opportunities. You can build a whole practice around whatever quirky set-up works for you. A talented close friend of mine noticed she had 20 free minutes in between taking her son to school and going to work. Instead of “killing time” or scrolling through a feed, she made the choice to begin seizing that small window of opportunity to write music, making do with what she had.
But very quickly, those minutes became a time she looked forward to and relied on. In other words, it became a practice. She’s written scores of songs, all in that little chunk of her day.
Don’t limit where/when you can write. Be ready to write anywhere. And instead of trying to find huge chunks of free time or super quiet spaces, lean into what actually works for you, no matter how unusual or brief it is.
Quick Tips:
Record voice memos while driving to/from work
Make notes while waiting in line at the pharmacy
Like a smoker makes a practice of pausing their day and stepping outside periodically to smoke, make a practice of stepping outside periodically to scribble a few notes
Place multiple notebooks and pens throughout your living space
Next time (or each time) you pick up your phone, open up a notes app and write a sentence or two
What to write?
When you’re first establishing a practice and laying the groundwork for habit-forming, don’t worry about what you’re writing. The point in the beginning—perhaps the point always—is to get in the habit of accessing your courage and prioritizing time to write.
But if you manage to get the hang of that, then there is the question of ideas.
No ideas?
These days, when we don’t know a fact, we don’t think less of ourselves. We just search for the information on the internet. So why should we feel shame about needing help generating ideas? So many great writers and teachers offer exercises and writing prompts just exactly for this purpose.
Quick Tip:
Put together a pile of writing prompts, writing each on a little index card.
When you draw a blank, draw a card!
Too many ideas?
If your creative mind is prolific and it feels overwhelming, set aside the concept of there being a better or worse idea. Switch your focus away from finding the “best” idea. Focus on the act of following through on any idea.
Pick one thing (even if it might not be the best idea on the list!) and do it.
Write it.
All of it.
Take the idea to its limits – either formally (write a whole poem/story) or in a sketch format (write an outline for a book based on that idea).
Quick Tip:
Disorganized ideas? Lean into the disorganization. Toss a giant pile of writing or ideas on your desk or on the floor. Take some scissors and a glue stick. Make a collage. Surf the adventure of it. See what happens.
Try to view your natural proclivities—no matter what they are—as assets, instead of assuming they’re detriments.
But what about the shoulder monsters?
If you don’t know who the shoulder monsters are, then I envy you. These big invisible jerks hang over the shoulder of a writer, whispering all the reasons why she shouldn’t write—she’s no good, she’s a fraud, she’s wasting her time, she’s needed elsewhere, who does she think she is, et cetera et cetera, ad nauseum.
Shoulder monsters may stop the writer from writing, and they might even halt the entire writing practice. They’re relentless.
Quick tips for dealing with shoulder monsters:
Turn your attention fully on to them. Acknowledge them—tell them you hear them, but respectfully disagree. They thrive on skulking and lurking so just the process of shining your mind’s spotlight on them and looking directly at them can make them shrink, and can make them seem ridiculous.
Write down what they’re saying—let that act as a gateway to writing about other things. Make them into a hero’s voice, or an antagonist’s, or argue with them in your writing, or journal about how yucky it feels when they berate you. And then—keep writing. About something else entirely.
I don’t think my shoulder monster will ever entirely go away, so what I do is just aim to tolerate its presence, and to work around it like I work around any limiting force.
Last but not least? Read.
Reading is a poetic practice.
The way we write is based in large part on what we’ve read. Books don’t just inspire us, they teach us—how to write in different forms, styles, voices; how to use different presentations, devices; how to engage with different topics.
Read works by canonical poets from all the different poetic movements. Most importantly, read contemporary poetry. Read through the 20th century and into the 21st.
Read e. e. cummings and T. S. Eliot and their peers.
Read Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks and their peers, but don’t stop there.
Read Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver and Yusef Komunyakaa and all their peers, but keep going.
Read the likes of Tyehimba Jess, Joy Harjo, Ocean Vuong, Morgan Parker, Warsan Shire, Ada Limón, Danez Smith, and Claudia Rankine—all of whom have written some of the most authentic and creative work in literary history.
And then keep going—read their just-as-brilliant peers.
Your writing practice will grow and strengthen if you nurture your reading practice. The two are entwined. It’s a beautiful love story.
Happy New Year, happy writing, happy reading!
p.s. I’ll be teaching an online class on January 25th on the volta.
In poetry, the volta or turn is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change—in thought, tone, point of view, emotion, or in another aspect. We'll look at some diverse examples of effective turns in poetry, and we'll work with both writing and revision prompts, with an option to share with the group. $10. Sign up here.
Thank you for this inspiring post so full of treasures.