Writing is one of the best habits you can have. It helps telling stories, preserving memories, and organizing thought in general. Here are some gathered tips that I’ll be trying these days to have writing as a habit:
- Write daily
Whatever you are thinking about, go ahead and put it in words. That thought will get lost with time and might be helpful for a future idea.
- Find your workflow
Figure out the best times and ways to write. Reserve a certain hour in the early morning or before going to bed, or during lunch. Find what is the best times of the day and conditions that inspire you to write. Write in small bursts or complete thoughts from start to finish, whatever works for you.
- Make it easy
Find an easy way or tool to quickly draft something in the middle of the day or while doing chores if you need to. That split second the idea comes, might never come again. Emacs Org-mode with Org Capture is my tool of choice when I’m at the computer. Use apps like Evernote, Google Keep, MobileOrg or whatever is easy for you to write things down while not on the computer (or paper notebook) where you store your drafts and writing.
- Figure out things later.
Don’t worry about titles, headlines or main topics, not even file names. Just use the date as a filler and write. You can figure out later what it is about when you are halfway done or finished. For example, blog post is part of a larger writing that I ended up splitting in 3 posts.
- Don’t publish everything you write.
The need to publish can be intimidating and cause self censorship. Publish when you feel like it, publish only what you want, but write about it first.
- Social media interactions don’t count as writing.
They’re too short (140 character tweets) and meaningless most of the time, unless it’s something you thoughtfully and more extensively wrote and want to publish. But those short social media interactions can be a good source of inspiration of what you can write about.
