There are two facets to writing endurance, the physical and the mental. The more you write, the more stamina you build up, the more mental fortitude you get.
Stamina, by definition, is the ability to sustain a prolonged physical or mental effort. When I write every day, it gets easier; I’m more creative and less tired. It’s similar to running. You get better, faster, stronger when you practice.
When you write every day, you will be writing much more powerfully at the end of a few months than when you started. After a year, you will notice that you have become so used to writing daily that it becomes second nature.
So how do we start creating a daily writing habit that helps us write more?
4 ways I’m increasing my writing stamina
1. Set a weekly writing goal like “I will write for 30 minutes every day.”
One thing that improves my writing skills is setting a weekly goal and committing to it no matter what.
I find a lot of people set goals without establishing their baseline. If you go running without knowing if you run a mile or 5k, how do you know what improvement looks like?
For how long can you write? Whether it’s 5, 20 or 90 minutes, try to stick to it for a few days, then set weekly 1% improvements.
For example, I found that 20 minutes is the average writing time per day for me. If I can exceed 21 minutes in a week, then that’s a 1% improvement.
Remember, a little improvement every week leads to big changes over time.
2. Join an accountability group
On Mondays, I join a Prosocial Writers’ Workshop, led by Dr. Lynn O’Connor & Rachna Rangan. Their goal is for the writers in the group to build confidence plus gain momentum.
What I’ve learned so far:
- When we first start writing, we might be nervous about our capacity or what we can deliver. There’s a magic behind the sessions that helped me write for an hour, feeling like it was 5 minutes. I make a lot of progress during their sessions.
- When trying to come up with creative ideas, your best bet is to go with quantity. The more ideas you come up with, the better chance you would find a good one. This means asking yourself more questions, making more wild guesses about a topic or problem you’re facing, and making more random connections between two dissimilar things.
- If you know how to talk, you know how to write. Literally, my first line from the workshop was, “I’m not sure what I want to write about.” But I somehow was able to write most of last week’s post.
- Commitment, Consistency and Content. Write every day, write a lot, write publicly. This is it. This is the way. If you want to get better at writing, you have to write. You also need to be consistent, even better if you publish your work. These three methods are the most effective ways to improve your writing ability and become a better writer.
3. Use the COMPOSE writing framework by Ellen Fishbein
In the last few months, I’ve been writing more consistently on my blog. One of the driving forces behind is this framework plus a healthy dose of curiosity. When I want to understand something, I write about it.
I believe simple frameworks can have powerful effects on our lives. For anyone spending too much time writing their article, a writing template can be an efficient way to speed up the process.
COMPOSE by Ellen Fishbein it’s such an interesting framework. You don’t ever have to stare at the blank screen or struggle to work up the motivation to write because everything is already there. You write with abundance in mind, not from a place of lack.
COMPOSE is a 7 step writing framework that breaks down into Concept, Objective, Material, Plan, Organization, Style, Elegance.
As you write every day, you’ll find that it’s more about the process of answering the questions generated than finding a topic to write about.
When you make a daily habit of writing on something you’re curious about, you not only have a practice of meaningful creation, but you can provide an amazing volume of work. I’m talking about the kind of writing that changes you in some way.
When I found Ellen’s work, after I read her Twitter thread, I immediately started experimenting with it in Notion and found it powerful.
I also moved on from using Google Docs. I’m now doing all my writing and research in Notion. 🎉
COMPOSE framework in Notion from one of my previous blog posts.
By the way, you don’t have to follow this method step-by-step. There are ways to implement something like this into your daily routine. Make it work for yourself without getting stuck on every point of the outline or wasting time trying to fill in the blanks. Choose between keeping your options open within your own process.
4. Set daily chunks
Chunking is meant to help writers set daily themes to create a structure for the overall project. It’s a way of organizing all of your similar activities at one time, so you don’t lose focus switching between tasks.
I know most of my writing happens at the beginning of the week because I know I will post every Wednesday, but the concept and research come from the week before.
Create an experiment by setting a specific time for all the activities you identified over the week and see how you feel. Some of my clients thrive with this way of planning.
Do you use a framework for writing? Let me know in the comments below!
