To write better, develop a habit of writing

He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/

> In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards).

> In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.

In this case I do agree however. Perhaps full time journalism would be a bit different, but writing short stories, novels, or freelance news pieces is going to come down to sending it randomly to a variety of publishers and hoping they like it enough to actually speak to you.

None of that process has anything to do with your “bonafides”, it has to do with writing well and composing a story (imaginary or otherwise) and some peon at the receiving firm actually liking it enough to bump it up the chain.

While I’ve used this advice to write better (blog entries, emails, presentations, arguments, etc.) I have not even endeavored to do it professionally. It’s still been helpful for me.

As William Faulkner says: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.”

With writing (as with many things), there is this myth that you should only do it when inspiration compels you to write. But that is total rubbish. You need to create conditions so that inspiration will strike, and creating a habit of writing frequently will lay the groundwork for inspiration striking. Tyler Cowen, for example, talks about how he writes every morning - whether it's the weekend, Christmas, or anything else [1]. This is an example you agree with his philosophy/economics or not.

Other recommendations:

- "War of Art" is a fun little book that lays this idea out, and frames what's stopping you from creating as "resistance"[2]. In the end, the book can be summarized as: create and stick to a daily ritual of creation. If you do that long enough, you'll create something worthwhile.

- Someone else posted Writing Streak [3] which can be fun to use as well.

- Others use Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" [4] ("morning pages") to develop a "daily writing practice".

Honestly, they are all the same. No matter what you choose to do, the most important thing is consistency! Do it enough and you'll get to some level of ability and more than a few finished pieces (Can't guarantee a Nobel Prize in Literature, though, unfortunately :/ )

1: https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book)

3: https://writingstreak.io/

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way

And I lift daily as well and it is engaging than running.