Hi! Welcome to Solicited Advice, a new column here in the ol’ Hattie Jean Hayes Substack Channel. In this series, I will answer your questions about the writing life. Our inaugural question comes from my beloved friend
, who is a very talented comedian with a Substack and a Patreon you can (and should!) support.Tristan says:
The entire time I've tried to write, I have had an inability to do it with any consistency. Like, with my film reviews, I was trying to do one a week. And I get to a point where I put it off and then it just doesn't happen. Or I'll work on a screenplay…and I'm still working on stuff that I started years ago.
And I just can't type as fast as my brain can go, so I get frustrated that I can't get my thoughts out as quickly as I'd like to. You know, me, I'm fidgety. I'm squirrely. I can't fully commit to just sitting and writing. When I can do it, I do it. Over the years I’ve tried to write consistently, but writing is the easiest thing for me to just go, “Never mind, I don't want to do it.”
How did you build consistency with your writing practice? Do you have any advice on just doing it, sitting down, setting time to do it, and building a habit? If someone gives me a deadline, I'll do it, but it's really hard for me to give myself a deadline. That's really what it comes down to: How do you stick to the deadlines that you, yourself, set in regard to writing?
I’m really pleased that the first “letter” in Solicited Advice comes from Tristan, who, long before I started my newsletter, said “You should start a Substack!” One of the reasons I didn’t begin right away is because I had trouble with consistency.
And guess what? I STILL have trouble with consistency! It may not seem like it, because I write every day, and I publish at least once a week. But it is a struggle.
I’m going to share some strategies, mindsets, and practical tips that have helped me write consistently and stop getting in my own way.
Part One: Fun Things Can Be Hard, Hard Things Can Be Fun
My boyfriend Myles is also a writer, and when I get mad at whatever I’m working on (or he gets mad at whatever HE’S working on), he likes to restate an axiom he heard in a workshop: “You don’t like writing, you like having written.” This is something I also see a lot on Writer Twitter, a consistent refrain from people who write fiction and nonfiction (not as much from the poets, though we’re sick little freaks).
Some days, I really agree with little proverb. But other days, I don’t. Here’s why: I like writing! I like the process – and not the capital-p Process, not the smug, pretentious part that prefaces an article titled Five Bestselling Authors Reveal Their Writing Routines. I like the process of type, backspace, type, add comma, laugh at good joke I made, follow up with devastatingly clever triple entendre. I like the process of coining phrases such as “roachscuttle underthrum” and “war of orchards.” I like writing. And it drives me nuts.
As readers may recall, I have spent this summer skating a LOT. For the past few months, I’ve skated at least once a week; when time allowed, I was going five days per week, even if those sessions were only 30 minutes or so. I haven’t learned any tricks. I still fall down a lot. Some days I skate smoothly and I feel cool and I have fun chatting with friends. Some days I suck for no reason, and I can’t keep my balance, and I fall so hard it’s a little scary.
Here’s the thing that’s surprised me: I am still having so much fun.
Look, I can’t say I have a lot of experience with athleticism. I am naturally good at writing. I am not naturally good at skating. So when I started this earnest attempt to Get Good at Skating, I was beginning from a place of no talent and little skill. I knew that the important thing was to preserve the fun part of it – because the moment it was a chore, I would stop going. Skating isn’t easy for me. It requires so much of my muscles! I have to stay aware of my body the entire time (and the bodies of small fragile children who are skating around me). My knee was starting to get a little screwy, so I started doing additional stretches before and after, plus added in a leg brace for good measure.
But it’s still fun. It’s hard – and it’s fun. Over a couple years, in 2020 and 2021, I found my barometer for “fun” went haywire. I was spending countless hours on Reddit or Twitter or reading fanfiction, because it was mindless. I wanted to relax and do nothing. It was easy; therefore, it was “fun.” Except…no, it wasn’t. Fun, for me, is using my brain! Fun is coming up with new ideas. Fun is trying new things and then trying them again. Fun, sometimes, is hard. Writing can be really, really hard; even when it is, it’s still fun.
So, this is a mindset you have to carry into your writing practice, if you want it to be consistent. You have to remember, this is fun. Or you may have to convince yourself that it’s fun (more on that later!).
Here’s a hack for keeping it fun: quit while you’re ahead. I’ve seen this bit of knowledge on Twitter, too. Always stop writing before you exhaust your momentum. When you stop writing, but you still have more to say, you’ll be eager to come back to the page. Bonus points if you create a short note of what you want to write about next, and leave it on a Post-It or bulleted list in your document. I like using interrogative statements for this, asking “What will XYZ character do next?” so every time I see that sticky note, I start trying to answer the question. I spend more time writing, because I’m thinking about the questions I want to answer on the page.
It’s like my friend Rosa said once when we skated together: never end on a fall. When I’m skating, I always try to leave right after a smooth, easy loop, one where I feel good about myself and my movement. Then, I’m preemptively excited to come back for the next session.
Part Two: Work With Your Existing Habits
Now, dear readers, I must admit something to you: Tristan did not submit a letter to Solicited Advice. Instead – because this is how Tristan’s brain and our friendship work – I received a minute-long voice memo, which I used AI to transcribe. And do you know something? The result is exactly the same.
Did you know I don’t listen to audiobooks? I don’t. I don’t listen to podcasts, either. It’s not because I’m a snob – I AM a snob but I wish I could be a snob who listens to audiobooks! It’s because when I listen to anything talk-y, I fall asleep. Put on a podcast or talk radio in the car, and I don’t remember anything I hear. One ear, out the other. You know how it is. Since I can’t retain audiobooks, I don’t force myself to listen to them. If the “butt in chair” method of building a writing practice makes you miserable, why try and do it?
There are a lot of ways to write in a way that serves you. As I mentioned above, I used Otter, an AI transcription tool, to “write” Tristan’s letter. If you don’t want to do that, just try using voice-to-text to create a note in your phone, or record a voice memo to yourself. If sitting at a desk for hours makes you want to disintegrate, write in 10-minute “speed rounds” throughout your day. Designate your entire lunch break for writing, so you don’t have to do it after work. “Steal” other time for writing – I like to set up a phone reminder that goes off during my regular after-work mindless-scrolling time and tells me to open my word processing app and type instead. Make your environment as comfortable as possible if it will help you write – for example, at my day job, I edit at my desk, but write from the couch.
I write a LOT of poems and essays this way. There’s a “living document” on my phone that is just content ideas for my Friday Dispatch. I work on that newsletter intermittently, on the train, in bed, while bored in line. And then on Friday, I get it all into Substack and fire it off.
My poetry documents include a “drips and drabs” file of small phrases and individual ideas, but also a long list of in-progress drafts. When I’m at my desk, I can type them up and edit them at my computer or at my typewriter. And when I do that – when I Put My Butt In The Chair And Write – I make a whole exciting production of finishing the poem, because by that point, it’s exactly what I’m doing! I’m finishing what I’ve started, even if I didn’t “start” by sitting down with a pen and paper and a big dose of self-discipline.
To live a writing life, you don’t need to change how you live. You just need to integrate writing into your existing lifestyle.
Part Three: Trick Your Stupid Lizard Brain
So, what if you aren’t having any fun? What if you’re struggling to write or – God forbid! – edit?
Trick your stupid, stupid pea-brain. I do it all the time.
Anna Havron has some great writing about rituals and ceremony. The takeaway from those two linked blogs is: use physicality to help signal “it’s time to do XYZ!” to your brain. The vital part of this, I feel, is that the ritualistic objects/actions come before or during the behavior you want to do more consistently. They aren’t a reward.
Now, I know a lot of people like sticker charts, and other “rewards” for creative pursuits. This is an area where I am a hater! I’m stubborn, so when I try to bribe myself to write, I get ornery. I think, Oh, I can’t have a Lindt Maple Truffle until I’m done writing??? Screw you, Hattie, I’m gonna eat FOUR truffles and watch a compilation of sad soccer moments! And I don’t even care about soccer! Eat dirt!!! This is an unproductive response.
Which is why you gotta trick yourself into thinking the writing is good and fun. Treat writing like the reward. Treat writing like the event. However you need to do this, do it. Make a special playlist you only listen to while writing (favorite albums work great for this). Buy a fancy perfume, or get some fancy perfume samples, that you use at your desk. Make writing smell like a rich girl activity. Think about the things that tickle your brain the most – snacks, kitty memes, comfy socks – and let yourself have them during your writing sessions.
Sometimes, it can also be helpful to hype yourself up about Your Special Writing Time, so you don’t get preemptively exhausted, frustrated, or overwhelmed by dread. During your workday, set aside some time to think, “Oh, hell yeah! I am gonna write later!” You don’t have to mean it, you just have to sound kind of convincing. When you daydream, don’t fantasize about being interviewed on TV about your cool novel, or on the radio about your cool comedy special. Fantasize about having fun while writing. Imagine what it will feel like when you write several good paragraphs in a row. This might feel awkward and stupid at first. But what you’re doing is re-training your brain to enjoy writing, outsmarting yourself, making this a habit, not a chore.
Part Four: Peer Pressure For Homeschoolers
Tristan told me that being homeschooled and studying theatre meant a relative dearth of essay assignments, compared to a more traditional educational experience. But as a public schooler, I can attest that churning out essay after essay didn’t necessarily help me build a great talent for doing my homework on time. In fact, I think many people who rediscover writing after their educational experiences struggle to assign and fulfil “homework” for themselves. That’s why the devil invented grad school (I kid!) (mostly).
But the real question here is about sticking to deadlines you set for yourself. Tristan, I can’t honestly say I’ve successfully figured out how to do that! But I’ve established two different stopgaps that mean I can never stop writing for long.
The first is a newsletter, a blog, or some other consistent project. Tristan, you’re already publishing on Patreon and Substack, so take what you need from this answer and leave the rest. My newsletter has one real anchor, the Friday Dispatch, and when I don’t put it out, people get MAD. Or, rather, people notice. People text to ask about it. My dad, mostly. This is true of the other features, too, when I’m not in the “off-season.” During NaPoWriMo, for example, I promised to send five emails each week. And I did! Because when I say “I’m going to do this,” and I don’t, I feel like an asshole. Especially when I’m making that promise to an audience DOZENS STRONG. So, setting up a manageable editorial calendar of some sort can help you. When I started my Substack, I brainstormed content that could last me several months, and I wrote it into a planner, so I would be able to see what was “due” when. By setting publication dates in advance, I found it a lot easier to quickly write and produce my ideas, instead of waiting for the “right time” to work or to publish.
The other thing that’s helped me is workshops. Now, listen – you don’t have to do this the way I’ve done it. In 2020, days after I finished my novel draft, I joined a virtual writing workshop at the 92nd Street Y; three years later, I still meet with a small subset of my classmates from that cohort to exchange notes on one another’s drafts.
Meanwhile, when it comes to poetry writing, I have taken several different workshops, each with different curriculum and structures. And while I don’t have that consistent group of people, like I do with longform fiction, I found myself writing more consistently when I knew I’d have a chance to workshop the poems soon after.
What I’m saying here is, why do YOU have to be the one setting your deadlines? Think a little about what a writing community could and should look like for you. Some people write more consistently when they have an accountability group with check-in partners, but NOT critiques. They say that writing without the impending promise of criticism looming overhead makes it easier. And my other friends, the ones in my novel group, are more like me: we write more consistently when we know someone will give our work a close read. You don’t need to invest time and money in a formal workshop for this. You can find writing communities on Reddit, on Facebook, on Discord servers. You can just email other writers you like and admire, and ask them if they might want to participate. You can sign up for online writing sessions through organizations like Literary Cleveland’s Writing Club, and hope you hit it off with people in your sessions. The important thing is that you find two to five people you click with, and you let them convince you to write.
Part Five: Be Prepared To Start All Over
Establishing a consistent writing practice was really hard. It took years of trial and error. It took lots and lots of workshops, worksheets, classes, and other people’s advice columns to find a sprinkling of things that worked for me. Keri Bertino leads a great series called Writing for Fuck-Ups. In this class, I learned that the Pomodoro Method works for me…IF I have a cute kitchen timer and only do it a few times a week. When I wrote my first novel draft, I learned accountability partners work for me…IF they’re total strangers, like the ones you meet on FocusMate. When I first started my newsletter, I plotted out my entire content schedule, week by week, from November to March. Then, NaPoWriMo came around, and I started my content planning from scratch.
When your writing methods stop working, don’t stop writing. Just change how you do it. And be prepared to change it up again. When I was working as a tabloid reporter, I wrote 50,000+ words per week for my day job, and when I wrote For Me, I usually had to do it over lunch. When I started a new day job, as an editor, I no longer had a consistent lunch break, and I wasn’t generating thousands of words of text as a “warmup” during the first part of my day. So, I had to reconfigure my practices. There was an adjustment curve, but I adapted. And now that skating season is over, I’ll be adapting again – and I’m guessing during the holidays, I’ll be re-re-re-re-rewriting the process.
It’s okay to start from scratch. The important thing is you keep starting. There’s a concept called “junebugging,” which I first heard about in a video about cleaning house when you have ADHD. Don’t get discouraged when you fall off a habit, or get distracted from a task. That doesn’t matter. Return to it whenever you can. Like a junebug at a window, keep coming back. It’s okay if you stop writing for a few days, weeks, months, years. You can come back. You can start over. And if you need to use a totally different strategy next time, give yourself permission to do that! Over the last ten years, I have been so many different kinds of writer. But I have always been a writer. That’s the only consistency I’ve got.