How to write every day

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work, you don’t give up”

I have been reading this book ‘Bird by Bird’ recently. It is a book about writing, but the more you read it the more you will realize how the things in the book apply to life in general. I am not even halfway through the book, and it has already inspired me to start this daily writing habit again.

I wrote a blog each and every day last year. And I only wrote one each day, I didn’t stockpile multiple blogs on a single day to keep as a backup for when I might not be in a condition to write one. I wrote when I was sick, I wrote when I was traveling. I wrote one on my phone sitting in a restaurant for an office party. Some blogs were great, most were shitty, but that wasn’t the point.

When you are trying to get good at something, you have to put in the work. You will be shitty when you start. Even after writing about 400 blogs, I still think I am a terrible writer. But I am a way better writer than I was before I wrote these. And I will be way better after I write another 400.

I’ve learned two things from the book so far, which might help you as well. First thing is to give yourself short assignments. If you set out to write a whole novel, you will never get anything done. You will be intimidated as the task is so mammoth. But what about writing just a paragraph? or maybe just the name of a character.

The second thing is to write shitty first drafts. Don’t have too much hope from the first version of whatever it is that you are writing. It will never be close to perfect. Write the first draft as if no one but you would be reading it. This takes a lot of pressure away, and it gives you a good starting point to then write an OK second draft and an excellent 3rd.

Keep in mind that none of these principles apply just to writing. These would work with anything. For instance, I use both these rules while coding all the time.