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

  1. 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.
    1. 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.
    2. The challenge with this approach is that certain parts of the writing process may need larger blocks of time.
  2. 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).
  1. 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 “Weekly Schedule (pdf)”