To be a successful writer, it is essential to create a schedule and stick to it consistently. The goal of this schedule is to “habituate” yourself to a regular writing practice.
- Research determines that regularity (not number of days or hours) is the key to productive academic writing (Silvia, 2007).
- Treat this like any other important appointment—one that you can’t miss (just like teaching your class or attending a department meeting).
- If someone tries to schedule over it, say NO.
- If you must miss your writing time, reschedule it on a different day.
- During this scheduled time, turn off email, cell phone, and any other distractions and focus fully on your writing.
Effective Models for Regularly Scheduled Writing Time
- Write every day. The approach, advocated by Wendy Belcher (2015), is to write for at least 15 minutes a day. This habituates you into your practice.
- Advocates of this practice cite waking up early and getting in regularly scheduled writing time before going to campus, or not scheduling meetings/teaching before 10:00 a.m. to have time to write.
- The challenge with this approach is that certain parts of the writing process may need larger blocks of time.
- Scheduling several chunks of writing time. Schedule at least two weekly writing periods of a shorter duration.
- In Driscoll’s study with expert writers, most writers find that for complex writing tasks (such as engaging in drafting, building arguments, complex data analysis, and revision from peer review), a larger chunk of time is helpful, around two to four hours (Driscoll, forthcoming).
- Schedule a writing day. A writing day is one day a week that is dedicated to your writing. You avoid email and other obligations and dedicate this entire day to your writing.
Download the Weekly Schedule (pdf).