How Can I Start Writing More Often?

how can i start writing more often?

That's going to depend what's stopping you from doing so. I'll tackle some of the common ones and see if that helps you out.

You're working or going to school full time or otherwise have a lot of responsibilities that fill your days

Writing doesn't have to be done in large chunks of time. You can write for ten minutes and still get something onto the page. You can also write by dictating a voice note into your phone and using speech-to-text to transcribe it. When you have a day off or a larger amount of downtime, try to block off some of it for writing or for editing those speech-to-text transcripts into a more polished story.

You don't have any ideas

Seek you writing prompt blogs. Make a post on your tumblr asking for requests. Expand the type of idea you're willing to write - not everything needs to be a 100K multichap, so think of a oneshot idea and write that instead.

Every time you think about posting a fic, you get so anxious you just stop writing

Write something that you're not planning to post. Write something by hand so that you can't post it without making the decision to transcribe it and post it later. Focus on the writing instead of the possible audience reactions to the writing.

You have an idea you love, but writing all of the backstory to get you to that point is so demotivating you can't even start

Make a bulleted list of all of the backstory components that need to be in place before you can get to the part of the story you want to write. Now write the part you're actually interested in. After you write that, check in with that bulleted list and see if any of those parts are more interesting now. If they are, write those too. If they're not, you're done and can move onto the next story. You can post those criteria as your summary or author's note or tags.

You have an idea you love, but all of the research you have to do first is so demotivating you can't even start

Do you actually need to do the research? Can you write the story in a way that hand-waves things (bring in some pseudo-science or a Fantasy Costco or something to get around what you're trying to figure out). Is there someone else who has done this research already? Do you know someone who loves researching that you could get to help you out? Is the research just an excuse for procrastination because the idea isn't fully baked yet?

You spend so much time researching that by the time you're ready to start writing you don't have any time left

Do you enjoy researching more than writing? Is there someone you can partner with to write the story based on your idea and research? Do you tend to research and write in the same block of time? In that case, separate those activities out. Research until you get to a good stopping point and then write until you run out of research and need to learn more.

Every time you start writing, someone interrupts you

If the interruptions come via social media or other online means, mute your notifications while you're writing. Change your status from online to do not disturb. If the interruptions are IRL, have a conversation with your family or roommates and work out an agreement where you can get blocks of time without interruptions or where you can put up a signal that you're writing and can't be disturbed. Get a whiteboard or sticky notes or something so that people can write down what they need from you and you can check it when you're done.

Every time you try to write, you get distracted by a bunch of other things and can't actually get much writing done

If you write on a device that connects to the internet, you can get really distracted by the internet. There are lots of tools out there to block out those kinds of distractions to help you right (example). You can also try writing by hand on paper so that the internet is further away from the task.

Writing is really intimidating. The blank page taunts you.

Start by writing out your idea at the top of the page. It doesn't have to be in-depth, it can just be something like "A and B are stuck in different locations for a long period of time and they discover they're in love with each other while writing letters back and forth." By doing this, the page is no longer blank so you can fool yourself into thinking you've already started writing and just need to continue.

When I sit down to write, I don't know where you start.

If you're in the process of writing a story, try not to end a writing session on the end of a scene. Either write the start of the next scene or stop writing before you hit the end of the current scene. Then the next time you write, you have a place to pick up from and don't need to make a choice of where to go next. If you're starting a new idea, start at the point where it's interesting. You can go back and write the boring part later if you decide you really want or need to.

There are lots more things that stop people from writing, but I'll let people in the notes add more examples. If you're a writer, how do you make time for writing?