How can I write daily as a blogger?
How can I write 1,000 words per day in a consistent manner?
What are the hacks involved to get this to happen?
Believe me, these questions above are some of the primary questions bloggers ask on numerous search engines when they find it hard to churn out articles on a frequent, daily manner.
But before I proceed to reveal what needs to be done in other to jump-start a daily writing habit, I will have to first explain why it’s imperative to have one in the first place.
Firstly of all, as a blogger who’s writing on a niche best known to you; writing daily would help you cover grounds quickly on the topic you blog about. This comes in handy when you blog on a very large topic e.g. writing, health or personal development etc.
Secondly, writing daily makes you a better person since you’re actually setting goals and accomplishing it daily. And realizing this would naturally give you the required confidence to take on any mundane or gigantic tasks and complete them swiftly.
Thirdly, apart from making you a better person; developing a daily writing habit would also make you a good writer. As in, you’d be able to express yourself through your words so well that people would literally get what you’re trying to convey as they read each words of your posts.
And finally, now that I’ve shown you the reasons why writing daily is beneficial to you as a blogger, it’d be a privilege to show you how to start and keep doing this habit daily.
So, without wasting much time, these are the 5 ways to start and keep doing “the daily writing habit” –
1. Decide That You Want To Write Daily
We’re generally moral creatures as human beings, this depicts that whatever we put our mind to accomplish, surely comes into fruition as long as we have made up our minds to do just that.
Likewise, this can be said of writing daily too. When you decide within yourself that writing everyday is what you want to frequently keep doing, it becomes quite easy to write because you’ve made up your mind.
After making up your mind on starting, then you’d have to decide how many words to write everyday. Stephen King once famously quoted that, “To be a better writer, you’d need to write at least 1,000 words per day, for a start”. So choosing a specific amount of words to write per day is necessary. This gives your goal – of wanting to write daily – some kind of constructive form, since a goal without a precise target isn’t a goal but a mere wish.
With that said, when I decided to start writing on daily basis, I had a target to write at least 1,000 words per day, no matter how unpleasant it might be to write them out.
And to tell you the truth, with that target of 1,000 words in mind, I tried as much as I could to reach them each day and it worked excellently well for me.
So, it’s not only in deciding to develop a daily writing habit, but it’s also a significant factor to have a target of words, which you need to reach and overly accomplish on daily basis.
2. Write now. . Edit Later
Writing should come naturally and smoothly from you to the computer screen or paper. So when you constantly delete any little grammatical errors or typing errors you see while you write, you’d notice that it’d interfere with your writing flow, which ends up making you lose your writing muse.
So, what should you do to minimize the editing until you’ve finished writing?
Well, it’s quite easy, what you need to do is simply to turn off your Microsoft Word spellchecker or your word processors’ spell checker, since it’s basically the core reason why people keep editing their first drafts while they write.
To shut down the MS Word Spell checker until you’ve finished writing, do this –
Firstly, click on the Ms Word logo at the top left side of your screen.
Once that has been initiated, a little new window will come up.
Click on “Word Options”.
After you’ve clicked on “Word Option”, a new page will come up.
Locate and click on “proofing”.
Once the proofing page has shown itself; start by un-checking these buttons below in other to stop MS Word from momentarily spell checking your first draft.
• Check spelling as you type
• Mark grammar errors as you type
• Check grammar with spelling
And of course, you can “check” the buttons later when you’ve complete your daily word count.
This would help you very much in editing less and writing more in other to be able to finish up your daily writing on time.
3. Plan Tomorrow’s Writings – Today
Like I once said earlier, planning cannot be overemphasized when we talk about writing since it’s the embodiment of the subject in question. When you plan before time about what to write the next day, it becomes quite easy to actually write on any topic you’ve chosen to write on, no matter how complex it may be.
Likewise, to put this into motion, get online and do extensive research for the next day writing after you might have completed your daily writing of that day.
And when you do this continually, you’d notice that writing becomes easy for you each day you wake up to write. This would help you write faster and better, up to the point of even surpassing the normal word count that you’ve put in place.
4. Reward Yourself Regularly
Take out time to reward yourself for each day you complete your daily writing schedule. It doesn’t matter whether your targeted word count is 500, 900, 1000 or 5000; what is important is that you’ve managed against all odd to see that it’s completed.
So, once you’ve accomplished such feat; go out for a walk or buy yourself a wonderful dinner or lunch. Just enjoy the moment..;)
because achieving a goal isn’t easy and most people rarely achieve anything of significance in life.
So, enjoy the victory and make sure to have a blast. This way, you’d crave to achieve exactly the same feat the next day when you’re faced with the same word count.
5. Have Someone That Checks on You Daily
When it’s only you in a goal, you might easily start to give yourself measly excuses why you can’t fabricate the specific amount of words you had vowed to write out daily.
So normally, this is where attaching a second party to your goal becomes quite a good idea. Include someone you can trust to check up on your goal of accomplishing that specific amount of word count each day.
Apart from that, making sure he or she is given the power by you to seize something of value from you each time you fail to reach the required word count that you’ve set.
Believe me, with that only; you’d be prompt to take your daily writing a little more serious. Leaving you with no option than to complete the daily writing or have something of value seized from under your very nose.
In Conclusion
Since I started daily writing, it has been very wonderful for me as blogger, because I can now write tons of guest posts and also find more time to write for my own blog at same time.
This alone has significantly boosted my blog traffic to a reasonable level that I’m proud of, and it has also given me a little bit of confidence as a freelance writer too.
So, engaging in daily writing will surely change you and take your blog to the next levels.
I surely hope you’ll START the daily writing ritual today.
Do you write daily or weekly? How often do you publish new post on your blog? Do let me know in comments.