The Power of Consistency: How to Achieve Your Writing Goals with Daily Habits
Now that things are beginning to settle down around my debut novel—copy edits are wrapping up, a cover has been chosen (more on that soon!), blurbs are slowly trickling in—I’ve been getting back into the saddle to write something new.
This means going back to my tried and true writing routine for over a decade: Waking up at five or six in the morning, drinking some coffee, and putting in an hour or two on the page before anything, or anyone, can distract me.
I began this method around the time I started to take fiction writing seriously in my second year of college. But really, it traces back to my career as a competitive cross-country runner in high school.
My sophomore year I made varsity, and my time in the 2.5 mile course we ran was above average, but nothing special. The summer after that year, I committed to improving it. I did my research and learned that elite runners in high school ran anywhere from 60 to 100 miles a week to build up their endurance. I decided to do the same.
Each day that summer, I woke up early and ran anywhere from six to twelve miles. I remember the first few days being hard. I’d be half-asleep, stumbling and sweating through the Bronx, and wonder what the hell I was doing. But after a week or so, the morning runs simply became a habit—like showering or brushing my teeth. And as each day passed, the miles stacked up.
By the end of the summer I was running 80 to 100 miles a week and I was in the best shape of my life. In my very first race as a junior, I shaved two minutes off of my personal best time and shocked everyone by establishing myself as one of the top runners on my team, and in the league.
The lesson I learned was that the key to getting better was simply to put in consistent effort. Day in, day out.
When I began to take writing seriously in college, I applied the same principle.
Back then I didn’t have a novel to work on, or anything really. I’d get up at five or six and work on a short story for a creative writing class, a journal entry, or even just notes to myself about things I’d hope to write about later.
The point was less about getting down anything “good” or useful, and more so simply getting things down. Move my fingers. Create something, even if it sucked.
I didn’t realize it then, but what I was really doing was creating a daily practice. A practice that has survived through relationships, job changes, moves, and additions to my family.
This consistency—more so than any book I’ve read, class I’ve taken, or teacher I’ve studied with—has been the biggest contributing factor to whatever success I’ve achieved.
It’s also extremely useful for the nascent stage of writing that I’m at now, with this new draft.
I have a theme, some hastily drawn characters, and something of an endpoint I’d like to reach. But to discover what I’m trying to say, and what the story is really about, I know by now that all I can do is write a bad first draft. Spit out 80,000 to 100,000 words, step back, read it, and think about what the heck is really there. There really is no other way around it.
I also know by now, through the ten-year process of writing my first book, that I’ll likely have to spit out a few of those 80,000 to 100,000 word drafts before I even reach something acceptable enough to show to my agent, and probably another couple after that, too.
That might sound daunting. And at one point in my career it was.
There was a point when I had a 60,000 word draft of the book that’s coming out next year, and even though I knew in my heart that it didn’t work, I was so afraid to start over again. I feared I wouldn’t be able to write anything better. I refused to blow up what I’d already written. I spent two years waking up in the morning to move commas around, tweak scenes, and bullshit.
Eventually, I realized I was playing myself. I needed to throw it away. Start again.
Thankfully, my daily practice made the prospect of churning out a new draft simple. By keeping at it—one or two hours a day, five days a week, only writing forward, no editing until I reached the very end—I was able to write a whole new manuscript in about six months.
This was extremely liberating. In fact, it was my consistent practice that allowed me to reimagine my book so many times until I finally felt that it was about as good as I could make it.
The practice is the same reason why I’m so comfortable being in the dark on this new thing. And the reason why I’m not worried about the prospect of throwing away hundreds of thousands of words before I figure it out.
I know that producing the right version, the version that sings and moves me, and hopefully others, will entail sitting at my desk (which is now just my dining table) early in the morning. Whether I get two words down or two thousand doesn’t matter. The point is to do it every day. Get my miles in.
If I do that, I know I’ll be okay.
Peace,
Andrew
Recommendations:
Katherine Rosman of The New York Times wrote an interesting piece on Cornell’s decision to shoot down a “trigger warning” resolution from the student assembly. The piece explains Cornell’s reasoning (which I wholeheartedly agree with) but also shows how, lately, the tide is turning at many universities who are beginning to reverse some of the kowtowing they’ve done to students and their anxieties in recent years.
Junot Diaz is back! I was so pleased to hear him appear on The Next Level podcast. He addressed the accusations made against him in the past four years, the fact that none of them have been proven true (as this recent piece, yet again, exhaustively, concludes), and how it felt to go through all of that. Most importantly, he sounded like himself—like he is ready to finally re-emerge. I only hope new writing will come soon, too.
Shoutout to the Paris Review and Troy Schipdam for this awesome Q&A with a Bronx-bred hustler named Larry Campbell who made a career selling used books to the Strand. It was a joy to read this—and particularly in the pages of a publication like the Paris Review.
A couple weeks ago, at the gym, I stumbled on a song featuring Puerto Rican trap artist Eladio Carrion and something about his voice and style hooked me. Ever since I’ve been bumping his latest album, 3MEN2 KBRN, heavy. Two songs in particular: “Mbappe-Remix” and “Si La Calle Llama-Remix.” If you’re on the hunt for new music, and are a fan of hip-hop and reggaetón, I recommend giving him a listen.
Derek Thompson, a writer at The Atlantic who I always find interesting, wrote a recent piece about the virtue-signaling signs people display on their yards and how they tend to contradict the choices and actions those people make in real life. It’s the sort of story that always gets me, and that speaks to themes covered in my forthcoming novel.