working on my fic everyday is a habit I'd like to get into 2017, any tips? is it a thing you work up to or a thing you just dive right into?
I wish I had a good answer to this, but the answer is: I just did it.
For me, being able to have a way to say that I did (or didn’t) write was really beneficial, since otherwise the day can get lost in a haze of all the other days. This is why I do the daily progress reports, but it could easily be done in an Excel spreadsheet or by marking it off on or a calendar or whatever you like.
The other thing is that I have a really low daily minimum word count that I try to, but don’t always, hit -- for me it’s 500 words, which I can do in less than half an hour if I’ve got the brainspace to do write. If I’m having a bad week -- say if I’m in the middle of finals -- I’ll sometimes lower that to 250; I once tried to up it to 750 but have never been able to stay with the higher number. I normally actually do write more than 500 words (if I have literally nothing else going on in my life, I can easily do 2K a day, which is how I wrote Wake), but setting that goal as low as I’m comfortable with is the easiest way for me. (I usually aim for a snippet of about 150-200 words; if I’ve written less than 300 words in a day I won’t pull out a snippet.)
I’m not doing so at the moment, but I’ve also had times where the only way I can get myself to write is reward-based, which I break down to every 100 words. Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’ll get out a tiny dish of raspberries or strawberries or chocolates (Kisses or M&Ms or whatever) -- I usually do raspberries -- and eat one every 100 words. Sometimes I set a timer -- this is the one I use -- though I only do that for fiction if I’ve had a really bad day, since I don’t like mixing my non-fiction and fiction-writing strategies, and that’s one I normally use for schoolwork. (There are also some online strategies for writing that I don’t use -- Pacemaker is one I’ve seen highly recommended, but I don’t use it myself.)
And -- well, I don’t hit word count every day; there are plenty of days I don’t write. I do try to write every day, but I don’t always succeed. And that’s okay. There’s always going to be something going on.
