Today we’re kicking off a four-part series designed to help you break through some of the obstacles that hold you back from writing consistently, finishing writing projects, and (finally!) getting them to market.
Over the next few days, I’ll take you through a few simple exercises that will make it easier for you to write, help you get more written every day, build your confidence as a writer and accelerate your professional growth.
Sounds like a tall order! But if you do these simple exercises you will be able to feel the difference in how you approach your writing, and crossing the “finish line” to becoming a professional writer will be easier to do than ever.
Why I’m taking you through these exercises now
Later this week I’m releasing a new home-study course – Design Your Writing Life – that’s essentially a step-by-step blueprint for how to go from where you are now to the writing life you’ve always been looking forward to.
It will be available with a special launch discount on Thursday, May 8th, and I wanted to share a few select parts of what I teach inside it so that you can get a taste of what the course is all about.
Your first exercise is below!
Exercise #1 – Expand your writing options
(So you can write more easily, more often)
One of the biggest roadblocks to getting your writing done is limiting yourself to just one or two spaces to write. If conditions aren’t ideal, you’ll lose a lot of steam and think writing will be harder than it has to be.
We don’t do this in the rest of our lives – that would be like saying you could only go to the grocery store when it’s sunny outside. But when it comes to creative tasks like writing, this is a very common and very human issue to grapple with.
The good news is that there’s not that much to grapple with. You can do so much for your writing career by taking 5 minutes to consciously create a list of writing spaces that you know you can write in, even if they’re not ideal.
You don’t want to get so precious about your writing that you can only write on Tuesdays in the north corner of the house when the wind is blowing from the east. :)
The more flexible you can be with your writing spaces, the more easily you can break the feeling of being too locked in to or beholden to any one particular space. You’ll become a more powerful and capable writer simply by making this one change.
Here’s an example of how this exercise works
What you can do right now is take 3 to 5 minutes to make a list of the different places that you currently write in, or could write in, and order them from “most likely to result in writing” to “least likely.”
As an example, here’s a list of all the places and ways that I write, in order of most frequent to least:
- In my office on my main computer. The office has doors that I can close and lock.
- In my bedroom in my bed on my laptop. I can also close and lock the door while I’m writing, though I do so only rarely.
- In my bedroom at my grandmother’s old writing desk with my laptop.
- On the couch in the living room with my laptop, or at the dining room table with my laptop. I usually only use this space to write if my son and husband are away and I want a change of scenery or if they are otherwise occupied in another room.
- In a café or restaurant with my laptop, listening to soundtrack music without words on my ear buds.
- In the car on my iPad with my logitech keyboard. Least likely!
(I’ve also been known to take my iPad or laptop with me to doctor’s appointments where I know I’ll be likely to be waiting a while.)
Here’s why this works so well to make writing easier for you
This exercise will get your brain noticing where you already write most often, which reinforces your identity as a writer and can help make you more likely to write. Instead of thinking about all the writing you’re not doing, you’ll be thinking about all of the writing you already do.
It also can help you notice patterns in what kinds of environments are most suited for your unique writing style.
And, it can help unlock options for what to do when the space you’re writing in isn’t working for you – as in my example above, I can see my dining room table as a good place when I need a change of scenery.
Finally, it helps you see that you can (and do!) write even when it feels hard. The last item above in the example – my least likely option of writing on my iPad in the car – still shows me that it can be done, even in the least ideal environment.
And when you know that, the “I can’t go to the grocery store unless it’s sunny” feeling starts to go away – and you will find yourself writing more often, more easily, every single day.
Take 3 minutes now and do this exercise in the comments!
I’d love to see what you come up with for this exercise and all of the different places that you find yourself writing (or that you know you could definitely write in if you thought about it).
Take a few moments to write down a few places right now – even four or five places is a fantastic start – and tell me how you feel at the end of the exercise.
I look forward to cheering you on. :)
