How to WOOP your writing habit to help you boost your word count

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, repeat

​This 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...
~ Me

​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 plan

​You 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:

• When will you write? At a specific time of day or after a regularly occurring activity?
  
• Where will you write?
  
• Which tool(s) will you use? A laptop or your FriXion erasable pen and your Leuchtturm1917 squared notebook? (I’m not saying those are my tools for my morning pages, but I’m not saying they’re not…)
  
• Are those tools always located where you will write?
  
• Do you want to create any rituals surrounding your writing time, such as lighting a candle or brewing a cup of tea?
  
• How will you end your writing time?
  
  

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!