Nulla Dies Sine Linea

Write Every Day.

It sounds easy, at first, but life likes to make even the easiest tasks seem insurmountable. Work and family obligations take up much of a writer's "free" time, and frequently, the people we interact with every day do not understand our desire to write. To create. To put words down on paper and watch a story, born of our own imaginations, grow and flourish.

But practice makes perfect, as we all know. And without practice, how will you hone your skills? If I wanted to learn to play the piano (a task still on my list of things to do), I wouldn't practice once every other week. I'd practice every day. Even if I only practiced for ten or fifteen minutes a day, I would be forced to admit to myself that learning how to play the piano was important enough for me to take time out of my day to practice.

How important is writing to you? Important enough to dedicate a time to write every day? Important enough to become inflexible enough about your writing time that your friends and family understand its importance?

Many people believe they don't have enough time to write every day. But if it's important enough to you, I believe you'll find a way to be able to do it. For the space of a week, keep a careful schedule of how you spend your time. Odds are you'll find yourself becoming more aware of how you spend your "free" time, and begin to realize how you can implement a daily writing schedule.

To begin a schedule of writing every day, you must admit to yourself that writing is more important that whatever else you used to do during your writing time. Here are some suggestions:

But even if you begin to do these things, distractions still abound. Turning off the ringer of your phone during your writing time is one popular suggestion; unplugging your computer from the internet is another. If you cannot concentrate at home, escape to a local library or coffee shop for peace and quiet. And stick to a schedule.

When I first started to schedule writing time, I blocked out two hours, from 9-11pm every single night. For two solid hours, I sat in front of my computer and did nothing but write. I wrote on and off throughout the day as well, but the majority of my wordcount came from those two hours.

If you can't schedule two hours, start small. Fifteen minutes a day will get you used to the idea of writing every day, and you can expand your writing time as soon as you're comfortable enough to do so. (This also works for exercise, by the way.) Before you know it, you'll be in the habit of writing every day. And once you get into the habit, it will be easier to go with the flow.

Obviously, life sometimes interrupts and we aren't able to write every day, for whatever reason. Getting away from the habit of writing every day is much easier than you'd think. And once you stop writing every day; once you release that hold on the current of your story, it will be all the more difficult to get back to where you stopped. You won't forget what you've learned, but you might have trouble finding your flow again.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea

--never a day without lines--