So, you want to create a writing practice, and you’ve tried WOOPing that practice into shape, but… something’s not working. No matter what you do, you find yourself on the couch watching TV instead of writing. Learn how to harness the Power of Habit to finally get writing. Let's talk about habitsYou know how I read and then I tell you about it? Yeah, buckle up because in this blog post we’re diving deep into Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Why are we discussing habits in the middle of a series about creating a writing practice? Because creating a writing practice is all about creating a writing habit: something you do automatically. You may need to create a new habit, but, chances are good that whatever time you’ve picked for writing already has something going on. You want to write in the evenings after dinner, which means you have to stop watching TV and go write. You already have a habit of watching TV after dinner, and now you want to change that habit. You know you want to do something different, but you’re on the sofa again. How did that happen? Duhigg quotes a Duke University paper that suggests more than 40% of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits. Think about that: just shy of half of all the actions you do each day, you don’t decide. You just do. Driving to work, cleaning up the kitchen right after eating, brushing your teeth right before you go to bed? Chances are you no longer decide to do those things. You don’t even think about doing them. (Ever get to school or work and wonder how you got there?) You just do them. So, we need to know if there’s a habit already in place for the time and location you’ve chosen for your writing practice. If there is, then we need to know how to change it. If there isn’t, then we have the simpler task of creating a new habit. Which means we get to talk about:
PS: You can use WOOP to create a new habit, but if it isn’t working for you, this is an alternative. WOOPing an existing habit may be troublesome because, as we’ll see soon, you can’t kill an existing habit, merely modify it, but you have to know how. What is a habit?Duhigg breaks habits down into three parts that he calls a “habit loop:”
First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. For example: Turning the TV off at the end of the day is a cue to do whatever you do before bed. (Even our cats are cued by the TV turning off…) The clock showing 3:00 signals it’s time to get the kid from school. Feeling lonely triggers the need to “just check” Facebook. The routine is the set of actions, some quite complex, that you automatically perform. When I say complex, I mean seriously complex: watch a kid learn to drive to see just how many behaviors can be routinized until you can drive to work without paying any conscious attention at all. A few of those behaviors include:
Finally, a habit loop ends with a reward: a dopamine hit from seeing your best friend “liked” your kid’s photo on Facebook or satisfaction that you’ve taken care of yourself by brushing your teeth. Why are habits formed?o, now we know what a habit is, why do we create them? And why so many of them? The TL;DR version is: our brains are lazy. Our brains are energy-sucking beasts that are expensive to operate. Shunting some actions to habit frees up brain energy. Our brains are also really really really powerful: we’d get overwhelmed if we truly stopped to pay attention to each and every piece of data our brains collect and then make a conscious decision about which data to pay attention to and then make another conscious decision about which data to act on. When you drive from home to work, you probably no longer notice your neighbor’s Suburban parked in their driveway, the plum trees lining the streets, the fountain in your other neighbor’s yard, the peeling paint on the other other neighbor’s front porch, or the playground in front of you. But you WILL notice when a ball rolls into the street and a child chases after it. If your brain paid attention to all those other unchanging things, you’d probably be unable to stop in time. So: habits free us up to, really, just get anything done. How do we create a habit?So you’ve chosen a time and location for your writing practice. And you’ve reviewed what usually happens during that time and it’s a big ball of nothing. Maybe you’ve just changed your school or work schedule so you now have an hour free that didn’t exist previously. Maybe your kid just got his license and now you don’t have to sit in the karate parking lot anymore. Whatever. You have a fresh clean space to work with. Lucky! To create a habit, we create a habit loop:
Cue The first time you do something, your brain pays a lot of attention to it: it’s looking for something consistent it can use as a cue, so you not only need to create or choose a cue, you need to ensure you can repeat that cue. A cue can be the time of day: after I get home from work, I will go write. It can be a physical action: Whenever I make tea and light a candle, I will go write. (This one also includes senses: when you smell mint tea or a beeswax candle…) It can be a feeling: I feel lonely, so I’ll go write a letter (that I may never mail) to someone I love. Or hate. Or admire. Or fear… It can be a combination of things: I felt something was funny and I just laughed, so now I will write on the notecard I keep in my back pocket what it was that made me laugh. You can also stack a new habit onto an existing one. I already brush my teeth every morning. I’ll use finishing up as a cue to go to my desk to write. Routine Once you’ve chosen a cue, then you need to choose the actions. “I will go write” isn’t precise enough for most of us. Something like this is: I will sit down at the kitchen desk, select a writing exercise and write by hand for 7 minutes in my green notebook. Then I will open my WIP on my computer, read the last page I wrote, and then start writing from where I left off. I will finish when I’ve written 500 words, or when I’ve written for 3 hours, or at 3:15 when the kids come home and I want to greet them. Reward You’ve created your routine, now you get to choose your reward for putting in this effort. This, essentially, is the doggy treat you give your brain being such a good girl. (Who’s a good girl? You are! You know you are!!) This reward encourages your brain to shunt all these new behaviors to a habit so you no longer think about whether or not you’re going to do it, you just do it. Rewards can be anything, so long as it works for you: a piece of especially fine chocolate, five minutes spent completely by yourself outside, the satisfaction you feel when you cross off today on your calendar and note that you did not break the chain, the pride you feel for doing something that’s important to you. The knowledge that you are now 500 words or three hours closer to your goal. When you finish your writing routine, make sure to take a moment, especially in the early days of creating your habit, to recognize what you’ve done. That will reinforce to your brain that this is important, and it gives you time to feel the good feels that also reinforce to your brain that this is important. A final note on creating a habit: if you decide to do something as a reward, like have that chocolate or go outside, then GO DO IT. Otherwise your brain (and I’m not making this up) will now think that you’re a big lying liar who lies and that this whole habit thing isn’t really all that important to you. Your brain basically says, “I’m out!” How do we change our habits?OK, now let’s say that you’ve looked over your schedule and you see that the best time for you to write is right after dinner, when you usually sit down to read or watch TV. You’ve been doing that every night for the past month, year, several years. (Gotta keep up with The Walking Dead…) That’s a big ole habit that you need to change. But, it turns out you can’t get rid of a bad habit; once you’ve created a cue-routine-reward loop, you’re stuck with the cue and the reward. (This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to beat addiction. I tried to summarize why, but then decided I ain’t touching that with a ten-foot pool. Go read Duhigg’s book for details.) Changing habits, it turns out, is simple. It’s not EASY, but it is simple. Identify the cue, replace the routine, keep the reward. So, take a look at the habit you want to change. What is the cue? It may not be obvious, so be prepared to watch yourself for a few days and take notes. In our TV-watching example, the cue may be the time of day, or putting away the dinner dishes, or feeling tired. Next, figure out the reward you receive. This can be tricky to suss out, so again, be prepared to take notes. If necessary, do experiments. (Duhigg has a great example in his book about how he lost weight once he changed a get-up-and-get-a-cookie-in-the-afternoon habit.) Is the reward you get for watching TV immersing yourself in a great story? Relaxation? Finally quieting your busy brain? Once you’ve figured out the cue and reward, you now insert a new habit: your writing. When you put away the dinner dishes, stop, look around, and start your writing practice. If you love getting immersed in story, hopefully you’ll find that in your own writing! Get some helpChanging habits can be hard; it turns out you also have to believe you can make that change. Turns out believing you can change is easier when you’re surrounded by a community who is all working towards the same goal. Creating a new habit is hard in a different way: you’re building a new set of neural pathways and that takes time. In either case, you’re much more likely to succeed if you find a writing partner or group with similar goals so you can cheer each other on. CodaKnowing how habits are formed can help you move your writing practice from the “someday” category to the “Wow, I don’t even remember sitting down to write and yet here I am banging out more words” category. (Yes, that is a long category name. No, it will not fit on a file folder tab.)
On a final note: you can combine your new knowledge of habit forming (you’re welcome!) with WOOP to create your writing practice. The process of how to develop the practice isn’t important. What’s important is regularly getting words down on a page. How will you do that?
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You've tried everything, but you just can't figure out how to make time to write. It's time to WOOP up your writing habit. Let’s say you read the previous article in this series (3 Practical Reasons You Need a Writing Practice) and you’ve been convinced by my scintillating arguments that you need a writing practice. Fantastic. Away with you! Go! Write! Er... Yeah. How? You’ve tried to make time to write, but it hasn’t happened yet. Something keeps getting in the way. It’s time to WOOP a writing habit. What is WOOP?WOOP is a strategy for setting goals and changing habits. WOOP has four steps: W: What is your wish? O: What is the best outcome [if you achieve your wish]? O: What is your main [inner] obstacle for pursuing your wish? P: What is your plan for overcoming your obstacles and achieving your wish? W: What is your wish?My wish for you is to create a writing practice. You want to publish a book, I want to edit it. Neither of us gets paid till you finish writing your book. A writing practice trains your muse to show up when you do. It ensures you have a crappy first draft you can revise later. It gives you a sense of pride in your accomplishment. Look: everything else may have fallen apart, but you have 500 more words on your WIP. Now, creating a writing practice may not be your wish. Your wish may be to write your grandma’s memoir. Creating a writing practice is just a way to do that. But writing grandma’s memoir may not be your actual wish either. Why do you want to write grandma’s memoir? I am practical to a fault, so I get that this sounds a bit woo-woo hokey, but… if you don’t know your why, you won’t do the work. If you try to do the work for the wrong why, you won’t do the work. (Your brain is sometimes smarter than you… And tricksy.) Keep asking yourself why until you get to the root answer. You’ll likely find one of two things. You may find a really good reason for your wish: I wish to preserve grandma’s courage and humor in dealing with breast cancer to use as inspiration for me and my sisters; we’re all readers and love books. Or you’ll find… you don’t really want to write a book at all. You hate reading (this seems unlikely, if you’ve made it this far, but work with me) and wonder how you will preserve Grandma’s sweet Southern accent in writing. You decide to preserve grandma’s courage in some other, better way. If you learn you don’t really want to write a book, that’s OK. Now you don’t have to! You don’t have to fret about making time for something you “should” be doing and can move on to something else instead, something you really want to do. But if you come to a really, really good why, and now you really, really want to write that book, well… keep reading. O: What is the best outcome if you receive (earn) your wish?If your wish is fulfilled, if you do the work and earn it, where will you be? What is the best, most positive outcome? What will you have? How will you feel? This step may also seem a bit woo-woo-y, but this is where you get your motivation. Pursuing any new goal can be a slog (I don’t wanna sit down and write 500 words! The sun just came out for the first time since November!), so you need to know you’re going to get some sort of reward for pursuing that work. O: What is your main [inner] obstacle for pursuing your wish?What’s holding you back? Rational or irrational; bad habit or belief? Fear of failure, fear of success? Fear of failing to capture Grandma’s voice in time? Right now, all you need to do is identify anything that’s holding you back. P: What is your plan for overcoming your obstacles and achieving your wish?In my opinion, this is the most important step. What will you do to overcome your obstacle? What mantra will you tell yourself, what sign will you post, what action will you perform? Think of an if this/then that scenario: If [obstacle], then I will [action]. If I feel fear of failure, then I will breathe deep and say to myself, “The only failure is not writing at all.” Lather, rinse, repeatThis is where I diverge a bit from the original WOOP training: I think these last two steps (Obstacle and Plan) are a loop. Once you discover one obstacle and create a plan to solve it, you may uncover two more. These obstacles may run the gamut from the profound to the absurd. It tends to depend on the creativity and resistance of your brain to change. (See? Tricksy.) I'm sorry. I cannot write today. There's a cat sitting on my laptop... Identify and solve just enough obstacles so you can get the job started. Don’t run into analysis paralysis. And don’t worry about perfection. Done is way better than perfect, and perfect is impossible. Breaking it down further: A specific writing planYou may need to jump to Plan before you can go back to Obstacle (and then back to Plan…). The more specific your plan is for your writing practice, the more obstacles you can suss out and solve. When you think about creating your writing practice, consider:
What's your specific plan?When you have a specific plan, you can think about specific obstacles, and then come up with specific solutions. I plan to write in my kitchen, on my laptop, right after the kid goes to school. Obstacle: the kid is home sick. Plan: If the kid is home sick, I will turn the TV on low and let him watch a show while I write. So? What’s your plan? Brainstorming is one of my hobbies, and a great way for me to procrastinate... feel free to comment about any obstacles you need help planning around!
You want to write a book, but… it ain’t happening. You tell yourself you’ll make time to write, but you don’t. You tell yourself you’ll wait for the muse to strike, but she doesn’t. If you truly want to write that book, then you need to create a writing practice: a plan that develops into a habit that trains the muse to wait on you. “Making time” isn’t working because, you’re busy. We’re all busy. We’ve got to make dinner and help with the kids’ homework. We’re desperately squeezing in a visit to the gym before work and a call to our moms after. We're exhausted after a full day at work or school and running errands on weekends. And that busyness and exhaustion just prevents the muse from ever striking, unless it’s in the shower. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t keep pen and paper in there. You need a writing practice. But “practice?” Come on! You left daily practices behind when you were old enough to tell your mom you didn’t wanna play flute anymore! Benefits of a writing practiceWhen I talk about a writing practice, I do sort of mean those hated flute practices: A consistent time and place and goal for your writing. Writing regularly gets you three benefits:
You actually write
But that won’t happen if you don’t put your butt in your chair and put your fingers on your keyboard. You have to actually write instead of just dream about it. You create a habit by writing regularlyA habit is a set of behaviors or actions that you do without deciding to do them or without thinking about how to do them. Habits explain why you can still sing songs you first learned in your teen years, even if it’s been 5 or 15 or 25 years since you last heard the song. Habits explain how you can drive yourself to work or school without remembering how you got there. If you want to write a single novel, you need, on average, 75,000 words. If you write 500 words every weekday, you’ll have written a book-length work in 30 weeks (if I did my math right!) or 8 months. 8 months to write a single book may seem like a long time. But if you have to decide and plan each and every one of those 150 days when and where you’re going to write… you won’t see a book at the end of those 8 months. You’ll be kicking yourself, again, that you’re still not writing. You need to create a writing practice to avoid trying to “make time” every single day. You improve your writing by practicingWriting crappy words and then revising them is all well and good, but that can sure get tedious. With practice (i.e., repeated effort), your writing WILL get better and you’ll have to revise less. Or, more likely, you’ll be able to spot different things to revise, things that you used to need a critique partner to point out to you. Perhaps when you first start writing your novel all you do is tell, tell, tell and you never show anything. That’s OK. That’s what revision is for. But, if you write regularly, you’ll learn to catch yourself when you tell, tell, tell. You’ll know that now is the time to add in some action or dialog or description to break that telling up. As you read regularly in your genre, the conventions of that genre will start to show up in your writing. If you read how-to-write books, some of that advice will also show up in your writing. Your writing will improve. You’ll still need to revise, but your revision will go up a level. Instead of looking for show-don’t-tell, maybe now you’re looking for story structure: does this scene work in this location? In other words, the better your writing, the more self-editing you can do, the less you’ll pay someone like me. You need to write regularly so you can save mone… Er… You need to write regularly to improve your skills. What's your plan?A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without ever putting a word on paper. When you think about creating your writing practice, consider:
The more specific you can be in your planning, the more likely you are to succeed at creating a practice to write regularly, and the more likely you are to complete that book. How can I help?What's your plan? What are your obstacles? Share them in the comments. Maybe one of us can help you get around those obstacles so you can start writing!
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