How about a year’s worth of writing tips in one post?
This year has been a crazy one for sure, but looking back, we’ve talked about several topics that may be helpful in your writing life.
Some apply to your health as a writer—extremely important to your longevity in the industry!—and the rest are about boosting creativity, building your author platform, defeating self-doubt, increasing productivity, and more.
If you’d like to read more on any of the topics, feel free to hit the link.
Health Tips for Writers
1. Add More 20-Minute Walks to Your Writing Life
Studies have shown that this simple activity can do wonders for your mental and physical health, and it may be just what you need to get yourself back into a regular exercise program.
Regular walks also improve your creative thinking, boost your mood, and decrease your risk of depression. Read more about walking here.
2. Protect Your Eyes from Blue Light!
Blue light is all around us, and it used to be nothing to be concerned about. That changed with technology.
Gadgets like computers, laptops, phones, and tablets all emit blue light, and we are using these gadgets more than ever before.
Excessive exposure to blue light can damage your vision over time. Find out the details in this post, along with the devices you can use to protect your eyes.
3. Don’t Give Up on Losing Weight
Weight gain is easy for writers because we spend a lot of time on the computer. We’re also more at risk for that devious, slow type of weight gain that catches up with us over the years and puts us at risk for type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Find seven tips to help you shed the extra pounds in this post.
4. Don’t Forget to Take Time to Relax!
Creativity, in general, has been linked with anxiety in several studies. Researchers noted in one that “anxiety was greater for situations that required creativity than similar situations that did not.”
We all need to incorporate stress-relieving activities into our lives. In this post, find five easy ones proven to not only help you relax but enjoy other health benefits as well.
5. Consider Taking a Daily Nap
The health benefits of naps are many and the effects can be cumulative. It is important, though, not to allow them to last too long. If you do, they can damage rather than enhance your health and creativity.
How long is the ideal nap? It’s up to you, but in general, studies show that if you sleep for an hour or longer, that’s too long. It’s best to close your eyes for 10-45 minutes.
Follow that advice, and you’re likely to enjoy these benefits.
6. Develop More Patience
Impatience isn’t just frustrating and irritating—it’s bad for your health. It can increase your risk of high blood pressure, for example, even if you’re a young adult.
Being patient, on the other hand, can provide you with several health benefits, including increased well-being, better mood, improved empathy, and greater gratitude.
Writers have to wait all the time. Do you handle it patiently? Find out why it’s important and how you can develop more patience in this post.
7. Avoid and Treat Painful Sciatica
It’s a common affliction for writers: painful sciatica.
Perhaps the worst thing about it is its persistence. Just when you think you’ve seen the last of it, it shows up again to make your writing time miserable.
If you’d like to say “goodbye” to sciatica for good, read this post.
8. Get Up More Often!
You know that sitting for long periods isn’t good for you. You may have even heard that “sitting is the new smoking,” because of how it increases your risk for overweight, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
But you exercise 30-60 minutes a day. You eat healthy foods most of the time. You get 7-8 hours of sleep most nights. So even if you sit more than you should, you’ll be fine, right?
A lot of people think this way. After all, it’s not easy to avoid a lot of sitting, so we tend to rationalize it away.
To help you break the habit, check out the fifteen things that happen to your body when you sit for too long.
9. Watch Out for Computer Dizziness
So here’s a surprise: apparently, dizziness is a common problem in people who spend long hours working at the computer. There are a few possible reasons for this. Find out what they are and how you can stop all the spinning!
What qualifies as “long hours” anyway? You’ll find the answer to that, too, along with some advice on how to limit your computer time—for the sake of your physical and mental health.
Productivity Tips for Writers
10. Small Changes Can Have Big Impacts
Do you have to make big changes in your life to improve productivity?
Not always.
We shared 11 little things you can do to get more writing done, no matter how crazy your life is. Check them out here.
11. Keep Writing Even If You’re Stuck at Home
Though we hope government-mandated shutdowns will soon be a thing of the past, you may still be spending more time at home than usual for the next several months to come.
To keep making steady progress on your writing projects, follow these five tips.
12. Make Writing Part of Your “Me Time”
If you’re having a hard time fitting writing into your busy life, it may be time to look at it differently.
How about making it part of your “me” time? After all, writing is something you do for yourself. It makes sense that it could work well as part of your personal relaxation time.
If you are at a loss as to how you’re going to find 45-60 minutes a few times a week for me time/writing time, try these tips.
13. Don’t Let Brain Fog Mess Up Your Writing Session
Brain fog is a unique type of mental strain or fatigue that affects your thinking and ability to concentrate. You may feel that your brain just isn’t as sharp as it usually is.
Anyone can experience brain fog now and then, but if you notice it frequently, it’s time to make some changes—both for your health and your writing!
Try these seven tricks to chase away brain fog.
14. Find the Time Wasters In Your Life
Still, struggling to find time to write? Don’t despair. No matter how efficient you may think you are, you probably have some time wasters lingering around your schedule.
These are those activities, people, events, habits, or materials that slow you down, interrupt you, or otherwise cause you to turn away from your priorities.
Find these and eliminate them, and you can free up 15, 30, or even 60 minutes to write, and as we all know, every little bit counts. Discover four ways to root out your time wasters.
15. Make Writing Progress in Just 15 Minutes a Day
Writers dream of having uninterrupted months to attend solely to writing. If you’ve ever managed to grant yourself an extended weekend or even a week or two to write, however, you may have noticed—it doesn’t make it easier to get the writing done.
Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” which means that the more time you have to write, the more time it will take you to write.
Flip that around and you have: “The less time you have to write, the less time it will take you to write.”
It’s time to stop complaining about not having time to write. You can make significant progress on your story by carving out only 15-20 minutes a day. Find out how here.
16. Banish the Gremlins
Despite our best efforts to reach our yearly publishing goals, there are times when things go wrong and we’re left confused about what happened.
Might a gremlin have messed with your writing today? Find out in this post, plus discover new “rules” you must follow to outwit these devious critters.
Motivational Tips for Writers
17. Get Back Into Writing After Being Away
When you’re writing every day or at least every other day, you’re regularly working your creative muscles. Your brain learns how to deliver new ideas and gradually becomes more reliable at providing those “aha” moments when you need them.
Drop that practice for a while, however—because of illness, job changes, pandemics, family trauma, or other issues—and your brain gets out of the habit. If you stopped halfway through a story, you may no longer remember where you were going with it. Your motivation may have waned, too, making it difficult to get started again when you’re ready.
If you want to reestablish a writing practice but you’re finding it difficult, try these tips.
18. Consider Making a Date with Your Writing
Have you found it difficult to motivate yourself to write this year? If so, you may want to try making a date with your writing.
To increase your odds that it will be a smashing success—and the first of many more positive interactions between you—do your homework and consider the tips in this post.
19. Keep Self-Doubt from Getting You Down
Few writers make it through life without struggling with self-doubt. It’s destructive, discouraging, and dangerous.
If you’re experiencing it, you must learn how to manage it if you want to be a successful writer. In this post, discover three easy ways you can defeat this monster.
20. Stay Motivated to Write No Matter What
Stress and anxiety create all kinds of negative side effects, including fatigue, lack of focus, cravings for junk food, apathy, brain fog, and a lack of confidence in the future. You may look at your writing goals and say to yourself, “Who cares anyway?”
If you’re finding it more difficult to get any writing done, use these tactics to motivate yourself to get back to work.
21. Sometimes, It’s Important to Ignore How You Feel
We writers rely on our emotions. They propel our stories. They help us empathize with our characters. They pave the way to story themes.
But sometimes, a writer’s emotions get in the way.
Discover five times when writers should ignore their emotions, or at the very least, keep them under wraps.
22. Use Your Writing to Weather a Crisis
This year has been one crisis after another for most of us, but no matter what year it is or what may be going on in the world at large, you may be suffering a crisis in your life.
Maybe you’ve lost a job, struggle with an illness, or had a loved one pass away. You can use writing to help you get through rough times. Find out how in this post.
23. Change Your Work Situation If You Have To
Writers want to write, but after a full day at a demanding job, they face all sorts of barriers, from mental to physical fatigue to a packed after-work schedule that includes making meals, caring for kids, and performing other similar tasks related to living life.
I’d like to help writers overcome this issue in two ways—first, I’m going to share my own story of how I got past this “day job” roadblock, then I’m going to give you some tips you may be able to use to do the same.
Creativity-Boosting Tips for Writers
24. Get a Hobby!
Hobbies are important for all of us. In 2009, researchers reported that engaging in enjoyable hobbies was associated with mental and physical health and well-being.
Specifically, the more participants reported being involved in their hobbies, the lower their blood pressure, total cortisol (stress) levels, waist circumference, and body mass index, and the lower their risk for depression.
For writers, hobbies are even more important. Here are five reasons why.
25. Stay Creative at Home
If you’re a writer who works from home, you may love the flexible hours, cozy office space, and lax wardrobe requirements, but you may also have one very concerning problem: keeping your creative juices flowing.
Without the proper precautions, a work-from-home routine can sap your brain of its creative energies and have you writing like a robot stuck in repeat mode.
Whether a work-from-home veteran or newbie, if you’ve noticed it’s become harder to get your creative wheels turning, these tips may help.
26. Seek Out Periods of Silence
Also called “noise pollution,” excessive noise has been linked to stress-related illnesses, high blood pressure, hearing loss, sleep disruption, and lost productivity.
Writers may want to add “trouble concentrating” and “difficulty accessing the imagination” to that list.
Silence, on the other hand, is not only healing but vital to our brains. Here’s why, and how you can incorporate periods of silence more frequently into your writing life.
27. Make More Space for Writing In Your Life
Space is important for anything in life. You can’t find a new job, for example, if you’re still expending all your energy and focus on the one you have. You must break away at least a little bit to open up space for researching new positions, sending out resumes, and taking interviews.
We have to make space for what we want, and that includes writing. If we don’t do this purposefully, there’s no way we can expect to be able to create.
To be successful with your writing, you must maintain four different types of space:
- Physical space
- Mental space
- Emotional space
- Creative space
If your life feels restricted in any of these areas, your writing is less likely to flow as easily as it should. Fortunately, a few easy changes can help restore your more creative self.
Author-Platform Building Tips for Writers
28. Be a Gracious Guest Poster!
Guest posting is one of the best ways you can expand your author platform, but you have to do it right.
When you guest post on another blog, you introduce yourself and your work to a new audience. You may also establish a strong connection with the editor or founder of the blog, which can provide continued opportunities in the future.
It’s a great marketing and networking tactic—if you make it one. Unfortunately, many writers miss the boat when it comes to this opportunity. Find out how to take advantage of this easy marketing technique here.
29. Learn from My Mistakes
I’ve been writing for over 20 years now, and I did some reflecting this year.
As they say, hindsight is 20/20, and I can see now where I made some important mistakes early on.
I’m sharing those mistakes with you here, in the hopes of saving you from making the same ones.
30. Get More Readers On Your Blog
You’re blogging consistently, but you feel like you’re talking to the wind. Few people read your blogs. You don’t understand it. You’re doing the best writing you can do, so why aren’t they interested?
I’ve found blogging to be the best way to get more readers for my books. But you have to do it right.
Discover five ways you can improve your blog to attract more readers your way.
31. Finish Your Projects!
You know how to come up with ideas. You know how to be creative and how to tap into your imagination. You know how to get started and how to work on a project. But when it comes to finishing?
You struggle.
It’s time to fix that, because until you learn the skill of finishing—and it is a skill—you’re unlikely to be able to build a successful writing career.
32. Act Like an Entrepreneur, Because You Are One
Authors are entrepreneurs too! We convert new ideas into successful (we hope) innovations. We take on risks and deal with uncertainties. We create businesses from scratch.
To honor the entrepreneurial part of you, here are five business-oriented tips for authors.
Thoughts on the Writing Life
33. Have You Made “The Decision?”
For years, I worked on writing while in a state of indecision.
I was committed. I stuck to a regular writing routine. I read books, magazines, and online posts about craft. I tore apart my stories to figure out structure. By every outside indication, I was a writer.
But internally, I hadn’t yet made that decision.
Maybe you’re in the same place. You’ve spent years committed to writing, but you have one key decision yet to make: To be a writer. No matter what.
How do you know you haven’t made it? Find out in this post.
34. Why Writers Must Learn to Let Go
Here’s the truth: Often when we chase things, what we’re chasing moves away from us.
Which of course is exactly what we don’t want when we’re chasing success in the writing field.
Does this mean we’re doing something wrong with all that hard work? No. But it does mean that sometimes, we have to know when to let go.
35. Seize the Opportunity to Write…Now!
It’s amazing how many times as a writer, I don’t feel like writing. I’m tired or my brain is dead or I’d rather do something fun and less challenging.
What sends me to the chair at these times is the realization that at that moment, I have the opportunity to write. And that opportunity shouldn’t be taken lightly. After all, even Anne Frank, who was a young aspiring writer during World War II, was robbed of that opportunity, so who are we to squander it?
What have you learned about writing this year?
Featured image by Christin Hume on Unsplash.
These are ALL SO good, Colleen! I’m going to embrace them! Thank you!
Thanks so much, Jan! I’m glad to hear that. :O)