— Mark Paxson
I’ve been pondering writing a post about a negative experience I had with an agent on Twitter, but decided to let it go and write about something more positive. A few weeks ago, Maddie Cochere wrote about her “habit tracker.”
The idea intrigued me and seemed to along with my theme for 2024 — Turning Bad Habits Into Good Habits. I spend a lot of time doing not much of anything, looking at my phone more than I should, and just not getting enough things done. Not just the things I have to do, but the things I want to do, that I claim that I enjoy doing. Like writing.
After reading Maddie’s post, I decided I would try something similar to see if it could help me turn bad habits into good habits. As usual with these things, I’m taking a little bit of a different spproach. Some of the good habits aren’t necessarily daily in nature. For instance, one of them is just a reduction in screen time on my phone (which my phone only tells me about once a week). And another is to get outside for a bike ride. Again, not something I can do every day, but that I want to get to once or twice a week once the winter weather is over.
I’m also not committing do do the “daily” activities every single day, or a certain number of days a week. Instead, I have five “daily” things on my habit tracker. I plan on adding more, modifying what I already have, and trying to keep the list fresh.
For purposes of this blog, one of the habits on the tracker is to write at least one hour. If I do, I get to check the box. And this is where the reward comes in. Much like children in kindergarten who have a sticker chart, or a card system where the color of the card in their slot indicates what kind of day they had, there is an intrinsic reward in being able to check the box (or get the sticker or the green card).
After a few months of struggling with getting started on my current WIP, I started this habit tracker about three weeks ago. In that time, I’ve added 5,000 words to that WIP. That may not sound huge to you, but for me … I had written less than 2,000 in the previous few months, so those 5,000 words are huge.
As stated above, my goal isn’t to write every single day because I know that’s not possible. But instead, of the five things I have on the tracker, I want to be able to check three of them off each day. I don’t manage that every day, but the tracker helps me keep these habits in mind and motivates me to do them in the quiet moments when I would normally just stare at my phone. In the three weeks I’ve been doing this, my phone screen time has gone down by 5%, 10%, and 8%. I’ve been exercising more, napping less, and writing more.
So … if you find yourself stuck in a rut and want to turn things around, give kindergarten a try and reward yourself when you so good.
Writers Supporting Writers 
I do weekly, monthly, and annual writing and writing-related goals. My little reward system is to allow myself to move any nice-but-not-essential action items to the following week, so I can check off what I did complete and mark the list “Completed” for the week.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Gold stars everywhere!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely!
LikeLiked by 1 person
A deadline is a real motivator, meaning that someone will notice if you don’t deliver. A couple times, I’ve declared in a blog post or comment that I will get a piece of writing finished by a certain date, with a request for a reminder if I don’t. It’s worked for shorter works; for longer ones, I usually have some sort of sketchy plan in mind and commit to writing one page (500 words) every day.
By the way, that Twitter experience with an agent sounds intriguing! 😉
LikeLiked by 3 people
You must write every day. You must write a certain number of hours every day. You must, you must, you must.
We all need to find the way that works for us. One page a day works for you. My habit tracker is working for me. For now. I know myself and at some point, I’m going to need to modify it. But … today, I wrote over 1,000 words, which is just so rare these days.
As for the agent thing. I’ve followed somebody on Twitter for several years. She’s a writer and recently got an agent and a book deal and her first book is about to be published, and within short order started talking about other news she couldn’t wait to share and she kept hinting at it. Until she revealed she was now going to work as an agent. I applaud her for all of these things and wish her the best of luck. I’ve tweeted support for her endeavors over the years. A few days ago, as she is launching her agent career, she tweeted about the types of stories she was looking for. I replied with two simple questions: (1) do you take novellas; and (2) what about self-published books with small sales. And I got absolutely no reply.
It’s all left me with a really bad taste in my mouth that her social media presence is about “look at me” instead of anything else. (Which, admittedly, is a lot of what social media is about.) But … if you’re going to tweet extensively about what you’re looking for and somebody asks you some simple yes/no questions, a reply is needed. Otherwise, you’re just another agent who doesn’t actually care about your potential clients.
After I didn’t get any response, I stopped following her. And when I kept seeing her tweets because of how Twitter works, I blocked her because I’m simply not interested in the “look at me” aspect of Twitter.
You inquired. 😉
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hmm. Maybe agents have to undergo an initiation ceremony that changes them somehow.
And yes, we have to figure out what works for us.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The first thing I do when I wake up is to devote one hour to writing or editing each and every day, whether I feel like it or not. (It used to be two hours; I used to get up earlier.) Once I get a few words down, the hour flies by – and I have a cup of tea and a slice home baked toast with orange marmalade waiting for me when I’m done. No word count goal, just that hour a day, though I will sometimes write in the evening as well, when the going’s good.
My suggestion is don’t make that hour of writing optional. And I do think setting a certain hour each and every day helps as well.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree with this, but if I’m going to make it a dailiy practice, I still have some other things going on that make identifying a specific hour that would work every day of the week a challenge. I agree with not paying attention to the word count, it’s just about the time and getting something done during that allotted time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I find that to do something consistently it has to become a habit. Making a game of doing things is a way of building habits. In the end, I would think that you’d do whatever you set out to do because it has become a routine part of your life, be it writing, riding a bike or whatever, not just something to check a box off. That I suspect that would grow old and frustrating if it doesn’t produce habits.
But everyone’s different, and there are lots of ways to achieve results. There is no reason why your approach will not work as you hope it will. I hope it works.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes … that’s exactly what this is about, the good feeling of checking the box should, at some point, no longer be necessary as I’ve rebuilt the habit.
LikeLike
You’re off to a good start. I like the way you’re going about this … not pressuring yourself to do too much and having realistic goals. The one hour per day writing is smart.
I still have a lot of holes in my chart, but I’ve written more in the past thirty days than I have in months. I, too, think once the weather is cooperative, more of my “habits” will fall into line. Can’t wait to ride he bike outdoors again for sure.
Here’s to staying motivated this year!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Indeed.
I know I need to add a few things to it, but I’m going to let that happen naturally and not force it.
Thank you for writing your post about your habit tracker. It has helped me so far. And, at least for now, it has helped me get to a place on my WIP where I want to sit down and write, not just to check the box on my tracker, but because I’m in the story now and it’s coming out of me. Fingers crossed, that feeling remains.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a good idea. I don’t have issues with getting things done as I have a very orderly and determined nature. I’m going to try to get my son to do this.
LikeLiked by 2 people
When I first started writing, I certainly didn’t need anything like this, but as my free time has expanded and available distractions have grown, this has helped.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I understand 💜
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a useful idea for many folk and I could see how it would work to a positive end.
My problem being’ in my UK Civil Service experience I survived a few management initiatives where we had to do something vaguely similar to justify our working day. Since these were devised by management consultants with no experience of our jobs and there were simply not enough categories to suit the day and also some which were quite superfluous. Thus I have a certain latent apprehension.
Yours however are far more flexible and relate to normal behaviour.
I wish you well with your system.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh yeah, if I had to do this for work, it would be a totally different experience!! Where I used to work, they are requiring those working from home to basically track every moment of time to ensure they are working. Work can already be soul-killing, that would destroy not just the soul!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Been there, seen that, adjusted the figures to suit what management wanted to see.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Carrots or sticks? I’m not much motivated by carrots — my life is lived austere already. But to be punished by not fulfilling some agreed upon set of tasks, lightly whipped, or starved, rattled awake at four am… That might incentivise me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For years, I didn’t need carrots or sticks. But eventually all I had was the stick of my self-disgust at another day/week/month gone by with little to show for it. For now, this is working. But I know that at some point it won’t. I only hope that, by that point, I will have once again developed the habit of writing regularly.
LikeLiked by 1 person