Write Every Day

Have you ever picked up a guitar after months away and felt how much you'd lost, compared to a day you actually practiced? Writing works exactly the same way, and it's the reason behind the simplest rule in this whole course.

The rule

Write every single day. It doesn't have to be your main project - a brand new, completely unrelated story is just as good.

My own target

My personal minimum is at least one short story a day, and that's the bar I actually use. If a whole story feels like too much to start with, shrink it down and build up from there, but do something on the page every day without exception.

Why the daily habit works

It builds the writing muscle the same way repetition builds anything else - it gets easier the more you actually do it, not the more you think about doing it. It also hands you a constant stream of ideas, because short stories are really just ideas you've already test-driven, and some of them will eventually grow into books. And it teaches story mechanics almost by accident: every short story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, so each one you finish is another rep at building those parts.

Make it easy to keep going

The trick to actually keeping this up is making it easy on yourself. Pick a time, a place, and a small amount, and keep all three the same every day. A little writing every single day beats a lot of writing once in a while, every time.