New creative writers, if you’re struggling to find the balance between living life and writing, I’m with you. I’ve been chipping away for a while, and most recently, I got into a good writing flow, producing a lot of work and making solid progress. I wrote these five tips as a reminder for myself in those moments when I need to grind, but I hope you get value from them, as well.

1. Don’t Wait:

If you’re waiting for the perfect time to write? Don’t. A perfect time may never come. You’ll need to work with imperfect time. The time you can sneak in. That’s the best way to finish a big project, bit by bit, a little every day. Be consistent, and over the course of a year, those hours will add up, and you will look back and see the progress you’ve made. But you won’t make any progress if you wait.

2. Always Be Learning:

At many points in the journey, you’ll feel doubt, like an imposter, but I assure you, those feelings are normal. In those moments, don’t be discouraged. Stay humble. There is no secret formula for what you’re pursuing, and it’ll take experimentation: trial and error. Through the successes and the failures, you’ll learn. And from there, your craft will improve. Have compassion for yourself and always be learning.

3. Schedule It In:

When working on a personal project, you’ll need free time. The thing about free time is that it can fill up fast if you don’t prepare for it. When Saturday comes along, and you don’t have any commitment, it’s easy to get distracted by chores, errands, and outings with friends. While you can still do those things, you must set aside time to work on what you had wanted to do all week. Be disciplined with the time you’ve set aside for your side project. Schedule it in. If you find that your free hours are constantly slipping away, mark them down in your calendar and block them off.

4. Set Small Milestones:

Chipping away at a big writing project can mean going days and weeks without seeing any progress in your work. That can be discouraging. Too many days where you feel like you’re going in a circle can cause you to quit. But don’t. Instead, take a step back and view your project as a whole. Then break it up into smaller, manageable milestones that you can hit on a foreseeable deadline. Once your start reaching milestones, you gain confidence and see progress. By seeing progress, you will have evidence that you can achieve your goals. 

5. Be Unborable:

In any Rocky movie, the training montage is the shortest part of the film. When in fact, it should have been the longest part of the film. Imagine if Stallone decided to make that sequence in real time. You’d probably be bored. That’s the thing about training: it’s long and tedious. But it’s an essential part of the journey. Life is not a movie, and you can’t just have Eye of the Tiger playing in the background, and once the song is over, you’ll have reached the next level. You cannot expect your work to exist in a short montage burst. You must be present, enduring the struggle, battling the bureaucracy, and overcoming the boredom of work.

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