How to Develop a Daily Writing Habit
Writing is one of the most difficult, most underrated activities that people all across the world covet. Some people write as a profession while others write because it is required of them in their schooling or career. There are even some people who write just for fun. But no matter what your reason for writing may be, developing a daily writing habit can be extremely beneficial to different areas of your life.
Usefulness
The best reason to develop writing as a daily habit is because it’s a great skill to have. Being able to coherently get your thoughts onto paper in an interesting and engaging manner is no small feat. Just ask Shakespeare. It takes a lot of practice and a ton of hard work. But once you get the hang of it, you start to see how it helps you communicate with others in an effective way.
Here’s a few easy steps to start:
- Get a blank notebook. It doesn’t matter what kind. It can be a college-ruled pad or a leather bound notebook that is designed specifically for writing. The only thing that matters is whether or not there is paper for you to write on.
- Get a pen or pencil. It doesn’t matter what kind. Whatever you prefer. (I use a pen so that I can’t erase what I write.)
- Write.
It’s as simple as that. The only way to get better is to write, write, and write.
Sense of Self
When you write daily, you develop a bigger sense of self. Even when you’re not writing about yourself, you learn about how you perceive things or what your outlook is on certain subjects. For example, you could be writing about a thought or a dream that you had, in which case, you’d learn how you take it all in and extract your feelings from it. Or you could write about World War II and learn about how you feel like those events impacted humankind since. It’s all really fascinating, to learn about yourself. After a couple of months of writing daily, you can go back and see how you were when you started. Seeing yourself grow is a fruitful experience.
It might be a good strategy to brainstorm a few ideas that you enjoy writing about first before you start writing about things that you don’t enjoy. Once you figure that out, you’ll be able to start to cultivate your way through your own skills. Another good route to take would be to look up creative writing blogs or head over to google and search subjects that you are passionate about.
Critical Thinking
Another great reason why writing daily is beneficial is because it helps you do your job better, even if your job doesn’t call for you to write. You develop critical thinking skills that you learn through your writing and it helps you become a better talker, thinker, and doer. You also have more of a reason to want to do your job at a higher level. Once you begin to write your thoughts and feelings down, you feel compelled to write about them again the next day.
Your point of action: find out a way to write every single day about the things that you feel strongly about. It can be political, it can be personal, it can be about the economy, etc. Whatever it is, challenge yourself to have an open mind throughout the whole process. It’ll help you grow as a person. Who knows, you may even learn a lot about yourself that you never really explored prior.
Language
The last reason that I have for you is that writing forces you to learn about the English language, whether you want to or not. You’re going to learn more words on your journey, whether it’s indirectly through contextual examples or directly from a dictionary. You start to build a tool belt of your best words, ideas, and phrases that you can use at any time. This gives you more of a chance to make a real difference with your words, not only on paper but orally as well.
A good thing to start off with would be a dictionary (which you can conveniently find an app for if need be). You can read a couple of pages of words a day if you want to or you can read a book and write down all of the words that you don’t truly know the definition of. This will help with your awareness and ability to find words that push you to do better with your writing.
Write
The number one piece of advice that professional writers will give to you is this: write. Do it every single day. In a month’s time, you’ll start to see where you are as a writer and where you’ll want to improve.
Content Source: Lifehack.org
