I love to write, but struggled to fit it into my daily routine – for years! I hope that with my help it will not take you as long to develop a daily writing habit.
One of the things that made writing more fun for me was free writing. Free writing involves writing about anything that enters your head without stopping – no editing, no considering, just writing. It can be done with or without a time limit. (I think both are fun.)
To create a habit of writing, you should set aside a short amount of time that you can commit to every day. Because we all have very busy lives, that time might need to be 2-5 minutes. The length of time is not as important as how frequently you repeat it. Then as writing becomes a habit you can increase the time if you would like.
The writing prompts I have included here are 5 minute writing prompts. These are meant to be done with a timer set at 5 minutes and when the timer goes off you are done. Of course it is free writing, so if you need to keep writing, you can. No one is watching over your shoulder to make sure you write for 5 complete minutes and not a second more. You decide – you are the author. 🙂
My goal with this site is to help you find the joy in writing. To help you make it fun and something you look forward to.
With your joy in mind, if one of the writing prompts doesn’t appeal to you, write about something else – what you are having for dinner, what your kids did that made you laugh, or even what your boss did that really pissed you off. It’s your 5 minutes – just keep writing.
Really, that is the only rule of free writing sprints – just keep writing … even if all you can think of is “this is stupid” – write it down. Then write the next thing that pops into your mind, then the next, and the next, and so on.
I’ve had times when I felt put on the spot and my mind went completely blank. The beauty of free writing is that you can write – “My mind is completely blank. Nope, nothing … still nothing.” Until eventually something else enters your mind. Perhaps you notice that you didn’t turn off the fan in the bathroom. Don’t go turn it off now, but you can write down that you forgot to turn it off.
So … are you thinking this is a silly idea? How can 5 minutes a day change anything? Well, you are not alone, but the power of frequent practice has been proven to improve skills more than total time practicing that skill.
Here’s an example. In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear tells the story of a photography professor who decided to do an experiment with his class. Half of them were told they would be graded on the quantity of photos they took while the other half was told they would be graded on the quality of the photos they took. In the end, the students in the quantity group took better photos because they were always taking photos and experimenting with different ways of taking photos. The students in the quality group did not take many photos and did not show much improvement because they were working on figuring out how to take the perfect photo before even taking one. (For more on this story, visit AtomicHabits.com and get the book – it is a great read.)
So take the quantity route. Write for 5 minutes every day. Then, as you become more used to putting words on paper (or the computer if that is what you prefer), the words begin to flow more freely.
Eventually, you start to remember all of those important things that seem to vanish from your memory when you get a pen in hand.
And voila … you are a writer.
So join in, make a plan for daily writing. Follow my prompts, or follow your heart.
Now set your timer.
Then ready … set … write!