Develop Writing Habits That Work for You

Jan 30, 2025 | Better Writing

Every human being is unique. Authors are human beings. Therefore, every author is unique.

One of your challenges is to develop a unique way of working that fits your situation and builds on your strengths. One of my challenges as a coach is to help you. Here’s what I’ve learned over more than two decades of coaching authors.

In the beginning, you won’t know your best way to work. You must discover, develop, and tweak it. It’s a never-ending process.

Your best way to work will build on your strengths and your natural tendencies. What are you good at? When do you work best?

Your best way to work has to fit your situation. What obligations must you meet? What do the people who matter to you expect from you?

The only way to discover whether a particular behavior works for you is to try it. Things that may seem perfectly reasonable in your head will not work at all. Other things will surprise you with their effect on your writing.

So, start with your best guess at what works. Read about how other writers do it. Talk with other writers about how they practice the craft. Then, pick something to try. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, ditch it.

The best system for you won’t be something you design. It will be something that you develop over time. Little tweaks here and there can add up to big changes with big results.

Start with things that work for most people. The odds are they’ll work for you.

I researched how some top nonfiction authors work. I chose authors who I thought did good work and read about how they wrote their books. I reviewed the book writing habits of Clayton Christensen, James Clear, Peter Drucker, Robert Caro, Robert Sutton, and Tony Schwartz. Here are some things they had in common that will give you ideas about where to start.

They all developed a disciplined process for producing finished work. This went beyond writing to include how they researched and collected stories and case examples.

They wrote at the time of day when they had peak energy.

Most wrote every day. If writing is not your day job, you may need to modify this to touching your project every day instead. Otherwise, you could be setting yourself up for frustration.

They were disciplined about eliminating distractions.

That’s a start. Try what works for most people first. It will probably work for you. Pay attention to how other authors work to get ideas about what to try. Keep what works and ditch what doesn’t. Repeat. You’re never done.

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