Difficult to make yourself sit, or stand, and write days even if your bread and butter depends on it? Make writing a habit that you can maintain on those days you are focused on writing the Great American Novel rather than proposal writing services for dishwasher repair companies in San Antonio. After all, regular practice makes a writer a writer, as according to Ray Bradbury the first one million words don’t count anyway.
Zen Habits
Along the lines of reading “Zen in the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury, Zen Habits helps you move beyond the physical act of writing to the whole of writing as it relates to your daily life. Zen Habits, created by Leo Babauta, is a minimalist’s website with a focus on establishing habits that lead to holistic changes throughout your life. On the site you can find several articles related to focusing on what you wish you were doing with your life, in this case writing, and what roadblocks stand in our way of your goals. Reevaluate your goal to make writing a part of your daily routine by reading the posts:
- A brief guide to life
- The lost art of solitude
- The zen of doing
- The Simple, Ridiculously Useful Guide to Earning a Living from Your Passion
- 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It
Perhaps you want to write habitually so you can become a better writer so that one day you can focus on writing novels in your preferred genre. Maybe you simply want to get into a habit of writing at a certain time every day so you can complete your daily writing quota as a freelancer. After reading the posts on Zen Habits, you will have a better grasp on why you want to make writing a regular habit and what you expect to be the outcome.
Lift
Another website that offers free habit forming advice is Lift, a social community that uses plans and forums for connectivity and accountability. Make a plan for your writing habit, or choose one of the many writing habit plans already posted on Lift’s website. Each plan features a list of steps that involve checking in daily and commenting on your progress. For instance, for a plan for a writing habit, one of the first steps might be to write a minimum word count daily, such as 500 or 750 words. Another step might be to look up a list of five of the most loved nonfiction books about the habit of writing and to read one followed by group discussion of the information. The website is a free place to hold yourself accountable as a writer in a group of like-minded individuals who are establishing on their own habits.
750 Words and Yarny
In making a habit out of writing, the most important things you need to do is to put pen to paper, fingers to the keys, make words out of whispers. One of the places you can go to write regularly online is 750words. While anyone who signed up with the site before 2013 are grandfathered in for free lifetime membership, new members have to pay $5 per month for the service. Using 750words, you can write anywhere that has Internet access, since your writing is saved in the cloud. You can change the color of the page and font for when you are feeling feisty, and writers can earn badges for accomplishing site goals, such as winning monthly writing challenges and writing at certain speeds and times of the day. Another site similar to this is Yarny, which has the option of being free for basic subscriptions. Yarny is also a web based writing service. However, with Yarny you have more of a formal writing environment that is marked by folders and white out screens for easily organizing your writing for saving or exporting to other programs.
Miranda B is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
