I genuinely love writing. It’s one of the few things that still feels like its own reward.
For next year, I’m considering making “writing regularly” a quiet resolution. Not to publish, not to optimize, not to chase progress. Just to stay close to the page.
Still, I’m cautious. The moment something I enjoy becomes a goal, the energy can shift. What starts as curiosity can turn into focus, tracking, and pressure without me noticing.
I’m trying to understand where that line is. Does anyone here write regularly and still manage to keep it light? How do you commit without tightening your grip on it?
I commit to “book time”, not to “just write”, because that gives me more flexibility. Sometimes I research stuff, sometimes I daydream, sometimes I read what I wrote last time and that’s how I get back into it.
For me the key is to kind of “trick” my own brain. Whenever I thought “I have to write for an hour now” my brain goes “na-ah”
But then I appease it. “No, no, no, we don’t write for an hour. We just write one sentence. Or nothing at all, we just read what we wrote last time.”
Then my brain goes “oh, ok, that doesn’t sound so bad.” And we start. And then we go “hm, might as well update the phrasing here, so it sounds a bit better”
And then “well, now I could write this next” And suddenly, I’m in the flow again.
Not sure if that works for others, but this way I wrote two full books and am 50k or so into the third.
I love the idea of reframing it! Will definitely try to incorporate this somehow as well.
No, I’ve found that what kills the joy for me is actually letting myself fall out of the routine of writing. I have ADHD, which means it is difficult for me to form habits. But I can follow routines, when I understand their purpose and benefits, which odd the next best thing to forming a habit.
A routine is something I can pause or skip when necessary. A routine is something that doesn’t feel bad to break one on a while, but it can become detrimental to let it fall apart. For many ADHD people, a (positive) habit falls apart the first time they fail, but a routine can just be continued because it has a utility, so it’s better than a habit — to me.
Routines are part of how I manage my executive dysfunction because I find that following a routine isn’t a primary choice, but breaking a routine is. Understanding the purpose of the routine helps reduce the friction of setting or changing executive functions for a time, and by making most of the choices about a flexible routine in advance, you don’t need to waste your energy in the moment trying to choose your priority.
So routines help keep me in the joy of writing. Maybe if making it a goal is to imposing, you can think of making it into a routine instead?
Wow same for me with the adhd! I will probably have to adjust my „systems“ and mindset about it as well
I think it's important to commit time each week that furthers your writing goals, but that doesn't have to be actually writing. It's very important not to force yourself to write, fail, and then feel bad about it.
Instead, if you don't feel in the mood to write, do something else adjacent - read a source of inspiration, read/watch/listen to a writing guide/tutorial, draw a sketch about a character or scene, start a ideas par or mind map, maybe go back over a previous chapter and see how it makes you feel. Heck you could even just lay in bed and daydream about your characters and ways they might interact, scenes they might be in, who knows.
There are lots of ways to be committed to the end goal without forcing yourself to be committed to an individual task.
Thank you for your insight. It feels very freeing to think about that its not just about the writing.
I personally write when I am in the spirit for it. And maybe that means I do nothing for three weeks, and then write three chapters in a week, and then go back to nothing, but that's the way it is.
I feel line embracing mood writing can be very freeing
r/FoundTheChatGPT
is it?
Yeah, it sort of looks like it
now that i take a closer look, i do see it somewhat.
then i looked at OP's account and it is 0 days old, and that does raise some suspicions.
Scrolled way too far for this comment.
Or just a good writer? ;) No, you‘re right because i‘m not an native english speaker and wanted to express myself as best as possible. I hope you dont mind. That’s also why im new here.
Not at all. I did NaNoWriMo for the first time ever this year and managed an average of 1700 words per day, allowing me to finish my first draft before the end of the year (just finished it yesterday).
During that time, although I had very loose outlines, I still had plenty of opportunities to discovery write. Some of the coolest parts of my story came from that month.
I just sat down at my computer every morning, turned on my dark academia playlist, and opened my google doc to see where inspiration would strike that day.
No
As long as you balance your day with other activities there is no frustration. I feel better when I start my day by archive my daily quota of writing (even just write 1 paragraph is okay).
I just stopped blaming myself for writing too much or not enough bc this is not helping me at all!
As I'm obsessed with writing and this is one of my desire all day long, I can write a lot every day and still having lot of fun. But when I block on my plot, I wanna write but I can't bc I don't know what to write, yup this is not fun at all T.T
When I write, my goal is not an amount of word but a scene I want to write. Let's write until that moment in my story. This is more affordable.
And if I don't feel like writing new things today, I just switch on rewriting and correction. So smaller work touch by touch.
Yes, which is why I don't do it. I do participate in writing events that require daily writing for limited time periods sometimes, but I'm exhausted afterwards and end up not writing for so long that the progress evens out with how much I would have written anyway in that timeframe.
Besides, my average week has a few writing sessions anyway, just from having an urge to write, so it's not like I would gain much from forcing myself.
That said, I'm not particularly ambitious and mostly just write for fun, so it's not the end of the world if I don't finish my story in x weeks/months :) Someone wanting to get published might need to be more serious about keeping a schedule.
What’s the name of the app?
No, it worked for me. At the beginning it was difficult, but after a while i got in a rhythm.
Roubs i haven‘t used it that much but its very simple so far
Maybe its all about getting used to it
Joy is something that builds up gradually over time, and I find that as long as I'm progressing my projects, I find joy in writing even when it seems like work. When I let projects die, I feel bad and it makes writing a chore without any reward. Either way writing is work, but joy comes with progress over time for me at least.
I think i actually heard a statistic about this a long time ago how jogging fo example will only get joyful after doing it quite some time. Will probably count for writing too
Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is "have fun writing," then how often you write doesn't matter to that goal.
If your goal is "finish writing a book by X date," then how often you write does matter to that goal.
If your goal is "become a better writer" that takes time and energy, and is better achieved by not letting writing go by the wayside for a long hiatus but by revisiting the world of fiction so your brain can absorb it and start working differently, and learning from writing and reading. In which case having some kind of routine is useful there also.
"How do you commit without tightening your grip on it?" Your goal is to write. Not to write war and peace. Not to write the "next great American novel." To write. It's easy to write one word 4 times a week, and fulfill that--which I think you'd agree is very light. You can write a different thing each time. You can use a different prompt or writing exercise each time. You're not commiting to an epic novel; you're committing to sitting at the keyboard.