Nicolas Cole explains that skipping a day of writing isn't neutral—it's practice at not writing. Each missed day makes the habit harder to restart. To make a living as a writer, you have to write daily, or you're actively practicing failure.
Rule number seven. This is a personal favorite of mine. Every day that you don't write, you practice not writing. So again, sometimes the simplest lessons are the hardest ones to learn, hardest to internalize. Every day that you write, you are practicing not just writing, but the habit of writing. Every day you don't write, you are actually practicing the opposite habit. You are practicing not writing. And as time goes on, well, one day, two. Two days of not writing, a week of not writing, a month of not writing, a year of not writing, all of a sudden, you've gotten pretty good at not writing. Which is why the more days in a row that you don't write, the harder it is for you to get back to, oh, it's been so hard. It's been so long since I built my daily writing habit. Well, yeah, because for the past year, you've been practicing not writing. So I really like. You know, this clicked for me right out of college when I got my first job as a writer, and I really realized, you know, if I wanted to make a living doing this thing, I was going to have to prioritize it. No matter what, I was going to have to figure out. And if I didn't, then every day that went by, I was going to be practicing the opposite, which is I'm practicing not writing. I'm practicing not achieving my goals. So I love this little reframe. This is something that I pass along to every single writer in all of our different writing programs. Every day that goes by, you are practicing one of two things. Building the habit of writing, or you are practicing not writing.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
