Shawn Zimmerman is a member of the Guild’s board, an enjoyer of data, and author of stories in the Fiddlehead Folio and Confronting the Chasm. You can find him at SeanZinn.com
There’s a lot of writing advice that focuses heavily on the importance of building a consistent daily practice. It reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. That’s only part of the quote, though. It actually starts with the qualifier: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” To me, that adjective makes all the difference. I rebel against daily consistency in my writing practice. Even weekly consistency seems Sisyphean to me. However, I do track every time I spend on writing activities. And periodically, I go back to the data to see if anything jumps out at me.
Here’s the daily data for last year (2024):
(Note: WerdZ are the nerdy metric I came up with that converts minutes into the number of words I would have written if I were stream-of-consciousing. I deliberately picked a dopey name for it to remind me about Emerson’s little minds.)
No apparent consistency there. Looks like a random number generator spat that out. But what if I look at it on a weekly basis?
Also, no. That really doesn’t look like there’s any pattern anywhere in there.
But. My goals aren’t driven by “Build a daily habit”. My goals are all in the form of “Do more than last year”. If I go back all the way to my first NaNoWriMo and look at the annual data:
There is consistency there. I am writing more each year than the year before. It’s not on the level of days or weeks, though. For me, at this point in my life, that level of focus would absolutely kill my desire to write.
Another thing that helps me conceptualize all this is the idea of Breathing In versus Breathing Out. Creation (whether physical art, or writing, or whatever) is akin to breathing out. You can’t do it forever. You HAVE to take a breath in sometime. You can’t have the breathing out without an equal amount of breathing in. So, any advice which tells me I should be breathing out every single day just feels like nonsense. It doesn’t work for me. I gots to breathe! For me, reading, watching movies, playing video games are all ways I fill up my artistic lungs. And then I need to sit with it, and let my brain noodle. But, of course, we’re all different so everyone needs to figure out what works for them.
Oh, and one other realization that changed my life: “Resolutions” don’t have to be things I don’t like doing. They can also be things that I do want to do, but don’t make enough time for. Like reading. I friggin love reading. But a full time job (and kids and life) kept pushing it to the bottom of the To Do List. But once I made a Resolution to “Read more books than I did last year”, I was able to make time to do it. Like magic! And it feels like I’m Making Progress On my Goals when I do it!
I think what I’m trying to say here is: I don’t think consistency should be the goal. I like it as a tool, but only in the service of something bigger. And there are as many flavors of consistency as there are people. One person might thrive on “Write at least 10 words every day”, while another might blossom with “keep a journal next to the bed so I can scribble down dreams as soon as I wake up.” Me, I respond well to graphs and spreadsheets and making that bar chart go up, up, up. It looks like it took me about 6 years to figure what works for me. Since then, I’ve been tweaking it and getting a little bit better every year.
So, what about you and your writing practice? Some would tell you to pick goals that are hard and scary. I don’t think that’s a great idea here. Art is hard enough without setting ourselves up for failure and frustration. It’s okay to be gentle with yourself. The goal should be to get better, not to get perfect.
So, I’d suggest starting with what you’re already doing. Pick a metric that makes sense to you – words written, minutes spent writing, days in which you did any writing at all, whatever. Then pick a time period – a month, a quarter, a year. Don’t set a goal for that first period – just track what you’re already doing. That’s your baseline. That’s what you want to do better than. Then for the next period, resolve to do a little bit more than that. If you succeed at that goal, give yourself a reward (seriously! Something fun) and increase the goal slightly for the next time. If you didn’t make the goal, then shoot for a slightly lower goal for the next period. Keep doing that and you’ll eventually find your own sweet spot.