You have work to do, a pressing deadline or a project that has been hanging over your head, but you still choose the other project that doesn’t have a deadline and is more fun.

Does this statement sound familiar?

I get you.

Last week was truly an uphill battle.

I worked to keep my studies, novel writing, and the blog balanced, but it was a daily battle against the urge to do other things. My friends had just started playing WoW and I immediately wanted to join them. I fought for a few days as I worked on my blog, but I eventually gave in to the temptation.

But I didn’t understand why.

I enjoy novel writing and find the blog exciting, but I kept thinking about playing instead of writing.

And it took a few days of playing before it dawned on me.

It wasn’t because writing wasn’t exciting, it was because playing was easier and fun.

The situation is perfectly represented with a teeter totter:

A thought occurred to me as I created this image:

“Jack you’re losing the battle to the easier option of fun because you’re still a beginner at blog writing.”

And if writing have taught me anything it’s that: Whenever we are a beginner at something we tend to easily get distracted or find ways to stay away from it.

Now, I’m somewhat of a lazy person, so when I started struggling, I immediately went to work. I wanted to determine the easiest and simplest way of doing things, and I have narrowed my way of building a good writing process down into three steps.

A word of caution: These are the things I have identified works for me. I’m still experiencing and adjusting things as I go, and I advise you to do the same.

Let’s get to the part you are here for:

How to build a solid writing system and what steps to take to make writing easier.

Step 0: Identify your distraction points and thoughts

Note: This is an exercise meant to get you started. If you have a good idea of where to start, then you can skip ahead.

To identify my distractions, I decided to go full “psychologist” on my own ass and life.

This is not something you need to do (unless you want to), as long as you just focus on identify the distractions and thoughts stopping you from writing (or any other activity)

And what better way to do this than starting at the start.

Before I joined my friends for our daily WoW, I’d do my daily minimum novel writing with ease, I’d struggle with my blog, but I did the work, but since starting to play, it got easier to just say “screw it” and join them.

It became a daily ritual, and it got me thinking:

“Why exactly is it easier for you to play than writing? You love to write.”

I thought for a while, of course while playing WoW and I quickly realized:

“My novel writing is automatic, but when I look at my blog writing, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

To gain some insight, I decided to do a deep dive and wrote out my thoughts like this:

Thought: I have no issue getting ideas for blog post, but I struggle putting my words down as I’m unsure if my blog posts will help. At the same time, I’m terrified I’m rambling too much, and it will drive the reader away.

Explanation: I’m constantly thinking about picking the right title, keywords, images, and design of everything. I’m unsure if the topic is interesting or if I’m good at writing. My focus is on the things I have no power over anyway and this is causing me, whenever I sit down, to feel exhausted because I don’t know where to start or what to do.

I made an overview of all the distractions I could think of and the reasons behind them. If you do the same, you should end up with a list of distractions/thoughts that you’ll use in the next step.

Let’s look at how I went about building my writing system (and the steps you can use)

Step 1: Identify and build your writing system.

Distractions are your brain telling you: “Mate this is a difficult task, and I don’t know how to continue. Wouldn’t it be better if we did X.”

To battle the difficult task, you need to identify the elements needed to do your work and give them an action while keeping your distractions in mind.

Blog writing process example continued:

The elements with their identified action.

• Identify topic – Open folder and skim through documents
• Research keywords & LSI – Put the message or phrase into a keyword searcher
• Create a temporary title – “How to” + keyword (a good standard)
• Do a blind draft – With the overall message in mind, write without deleting. (I will cover this more in a later post as it’s my preferred of gathering valuable writing)

The task: Think through the process of doing the task in your mind. Identify the steps needed to go from start to end. Then ask yourself: What can I do to fulfill this step? (Use the example above as inspiration).

“But Jack, my problem is not having a system. I’m just a beginner and don’t know how to start.”

I know, but through my experience, having a defined writing system will make things so much better.

But don’t worry, next step will take care of your problem.

Step 2: Force yourself to start.

The number one thing usually stopping you from starting anything is, crazy enough: The idea of getting started.

Let that sink in for a second.

You struggle to get started because you think about getting started? Sounds kinda dumb, doesn’t it?

But it’s true.

As I said earlier, we are beginners and there’s things out there you would rather want to spend time.

Even though you have the skeleton to your writing system, it needs to be stress-tested.

Basically meaning: You’ll fight an uphill battle until you tame your system.

Because when you start something new what happens is your brain must choose between two things: fun and something that might be fun.

And unfortunately, it’ll do its best to make you choose the guaranteed fun every day of the week. So even with the path around the track visible, you must prove to your brain that it’s worth putting in the effort to get the fun.

And to do this, you need to force yourself to take the first step over the starting line.

After I made my blog writing system, I forced myself to sit down, bought up the system on my second monitor and got to work on step at the time.

You can do the same.

A second monitor, a piece of paper or an image. It doesn’t matter, grab your own hand and get to work.

“But my brain doesn’t want to play along, what do I do?”

Sometimes you end up in a situation where your system is great, but you still struggle to get work done.

This doesn’t mean your system sucks, it just means your brain needs some extra convincing, so you need to make the steps simpler.

For me, I did the following:

“I have to write.”

Became:

Sit down, put on your headphones, open the drive and skim through 5 documents. Find the topic sparks the most excitement, then plug the message into the keyword researcher before writing the blind draft.

It might seem a lot for something so trivial, but your new activity must compete with activities you know is easy fun.

And if you can force yourself to get comfortable with the smaller steps you will eventually get comfortable with the larger step and your brain will have an easier time getting to work.

Step 3: Make the activity known, fun, and simple.

I have talked a lot about this term, “fun” and how it is the deciding factor between where your mind goes.

While it’s true it’s the main driver, there’s another thing you need defeat first.

The idea of difficulty:

Whenever I sit down to write a post, I overthink every little thing: Is my font correct, am I using the correct words, how will this appeal to the reader.

I mean, name any obstacles and I had it in my mind.

I thought it would be easy, but it’s the complete opposite.

Writing a blog post is actually difficult, and through my self-reflection I discovered that it’s mainly because I didn’t know precisely what I wanted to achieve.

I kept getting struck with my posts because I didn’t identify what the message behind was or what advice I wanted to give.

Therefore, before I write a blog post now, I must come up with an overall message and at least 3 points I want to come across, by answering questions like:

• What is the end goal?
• What are you trying to help your reader with?
• What do you want to tell them?

Even if you have worked out the simplest writing system, you might still hit a wall when it comes to work.

Don’t fear the wall, it’s part of the process. You just need to find a way around it.

Take a step back and give yourself the time to think about the overall purpose of a task and it will make sense to you.

“But Jack how do I make this fun?”

The hardest part of a writing system

This is undoubtable the hardest part. I mean, you can load up your favorite game and have instant fun.

But games are designed to give you the cheapest and easiest fun, whereas writing is an output focused fun.

This means you feel excited because of the output, but you have to use energy to create the fun. Using external factors is great help.

My go-to is listening to music.

I like having something that matches the mood I’m writing about. It helps me connect with my characters and the scenes, and in general just helps me get emerged into the story.

Another one could be challenges (write for 15 minutes without deleting, using prompts, etc), change locations by going outside, local library, etc. There are many things that you can do to spicy things up, but my greatest advice is to try to experiment.

We are all different, so it’s difficult to determine what makes an activity fun, but one thing I can’t emphasize enough is you need to accept that you are a beginner.

Ask questions, experiment, and challenge yourself. It’s the best way, from my experience, to have fun and improve at the same time.

That’s a wrap for today.

I’m still experimenting with my own writing system, but I’m getting better at starting and getting work done. I’ll make sure to update the post as I gain more insight, but if you followed the steps:

• Build your system.
• Force yourself.
• Make the activity simple and fun.

I’m sure you’ll reach your goals. Even if you reach steps that are different than mine, as long as you make sure to stop to improve and adjust your writing process as you go.

And if you have just started writing or want to write, and wonder if what type of publishing to choose, I have a post where I explain why I believe self-publishing is the best for aspiring writers.

Until next time, have a productive and creative day.

Your writing buddy,

Jack

Authorbytrade – Time to take control of your creativity.