The most ubiquitous bit of writing advice I’ve heard over the years is to write every day. I’ve tried to get into the habit many a time but always failed miserably. Until now, that is.

This isn’t a “Do These n Things for Instant Success!!!!” listicle. But here are some of the things that prompted this sudden and unusual burst of steady productivity in me (someone with ADHD to whom getting stuff done on the regular doesn’t come naturally).

1. I am in the middle of Walter Mosely’s MasterClass on fiction and storytelling, and he dropped a bit of wisdom on writing every day that made me see it in an new light. He said that writing makes ideas bubble to the surface from your unconscious mind, even after you’ve stopped writing. Your brain keeps working on the ideas in the background, and at the next writing session you’ll have these new ideas to work in. Lather, rinse, repeat and you are constantly generating ideas and growing as a storyteller.
   I recognized the truth of it right away. I know that I come up with ideas while I’m writing, and that they percolate overnight, and I often wake up with more related ideas instantly springing to mind. So Mr. Mosely linking that to writing daily was an a-ha moment for me. Of course you’d want to keep that cycle going forever.

2. I joined Vocal.media so that I could enter one of their weekly writing challenges, and I decided to keep entering one every week. You have to have a $9.99 paid membership to enter their challenges, but you can post stories with a free membership, and people don’t need a membership to read your stories. And they aren’t the only game in town. You can post writing on Medium, Wattpad, Smashwords, fanfic sites, your own blog or social media, and many other places. Some pay out based on reads, some let you sell your work, and some are just places to put your work for free. But in this context it isn’t about the payout (not that you shouldn’t try to get paid). It’s about getting into the daily writing habit. Finding something that incentivized writing a story a week did it for me.

3. I switched to doing most of my writing on my phone. I bought the Scrivener app because of the easy syncing between phone app and computer app (and because the phone app is simple and I love it—good for the focus impaired). But there are tons of free writing apps, as well as sites like Google Drive that you can access from your browser. Not everyone is going to like typing on a tiny virtual keyboard, but I now find it easier than writing on my laptop. And I have this device with me everywhere I go, so if I get an idea, I can stop and get it down immediately in the place where the story lives. Heck, I’m thumb-typing this right now in the middle of the night in bed (insomnia sucks, but at least I’m getting something out of it at the moment).

4. I’ve been reading lots of writing and publishing advice books, articles, and blogs. Some give good advice that I start (or think about) using in my work. But mostly they keep me thinking about writing. And thinking about writing every day makes me want to write every day.

The above have gotten me into a good habit (finally!). If any of these ideas work for anyone else, then yay!

Happy writing! And sleeping. Whatever that is. 🙂