After A Bout of Terrible Writing, How Do You Bounce Back?
It’s been a week of barely scraping by with publishing. A few days of almost not publishing. How do you bounce back?
The value of bouncing back is obvious. Writing daily has been the goal since the start of the year. Most days seem okay. It’s just recently where I’ve seen a steady decline in quality writing time. What’s causing this dry spell?
Importantly, what can you do to get back on the routine?
Analyzing Writing Routines
The first thing to do is analyze the current problem. I just fell off the “sacred writing hours” routine and it’s been tough to get back on.
I never had a solid routine to begin with either. Sometimes I wrote in the mornings. Most times at night. And for most of the time, writing started at the Typeshare blank essay page.
5 Ways to Improve my current routine
- Go for a long walk. I’ve written about this, but have never done it with enough consistency to reap its benefits.
- Prewriting. This takes many forms. Free-form journaling, vomiting thoughts on paper, seems like a good way to get the writing juices flowing.
- Writing headlines. Tim Denning, prolific Medium writer, writes these all the time. I’ve tried this and most headlines didn’t work out. But the point is practicing writing headlines. Ninety percent won’t stick.
- Reflection. Thinking about writing routines and adjusting wherever necessary (this essay’s purpose).
- No really. Do the sacred hour thing. Block off time for writing. Block off time for sitting at your desk. This is what you control. The writing may or may not come. Just sit still for the duration of your sacred writing time.
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