If you look at writing advice books, on Twitter, on the internet, or wherever, you will come across advice about forming a regular writing habit. Which I think in general is good advice, but how regular should the habit be? When it comes to writing or other creative endeavors, some advice is to work at it every single day. For example, there’s the Jerry Seinfeld method, Don’t Break the Chain, where writing must be done for at least 30 minutes every single day. The prolific novelist Stephen King describes his daily writing and reading routine in “On Writing”. Ray Bradbury, who was known for his writing productivity, says “I wrote at least a thousand words a day every day from the age of twelve on” in Zen in the Art of Writing. For Scientific Writing, Stephen B. Heard says in The Scientist’s Guide to Writing that having scheduled writing builds a routine “at this time of day, every day, what you do is write”.
On a more moderate note, in the book “How to Write a Lot“ by Paul J. Silva, he says that the secret to productivity is regularity in writing, not so much the number of days per week or the number of hours. He says “ it doesn’t matter if you pick one day a week or all five weekdays – just find a set of regular times, write them in your weekly planner, and write during those times.” In “Air & Light & Time & Space”, Helen Sword interviewed 100 exemplary academic writers about their writing habits. It turns out, some of them follow the every day style, others stick to a schedule, and yet others do fine by writing whenever they get the chance.
As a full-time scientific writer, I stick to the daily writing scheme, but only intensely five days per week. From Monday through Friday, I write for eight to nine hours a day, broken up by hot beverage refills, a couple of minutes to warm up my lunch, and two to three (sometimes more) conference calls a day. My weekdays are intensely focused. I usually write for an hour or so on the weekend days, on something different, like my blog. Or if I’m traveling, I take the weekends off. I think writing seven days a week would burn me out quickly. This practice is in line with some of the advice based on research and presented by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness in “Peak Performance”: “Alternate between stress and rest in your most important pursuits” and “Insert short breaks throughout your work over the course of a day.”
So, to circle around to answer the title question: it depends. I think if you can have the discipline to write every day, that’s great, as long as you are careful to limit the number of hours and also do other tasks during the day. For those of you who are primarily writing, say a graduate student finishing a thesis, or a postdoc or professor cranking out a manuscript or grant proposal, I would suggest backing off to four or five days a week and resting on the other days. This “stress then rest” pattern will keep you productive over the long haul.
What do you think? Do you have tips or thoughts about your writing habit? Leave a comment below!