The long, hot days of summer are still with us. The busyness of fall is right around the corner, so these quieter days, often spent escaping the heat indoors, are the perfect time to settle in and get some writing done.
Another Day and Another Blank Page
For weeks, my writing routine has been beautifully organized around not writing. Every night I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll get up and write first thing. And every morning I don’t. Naturally, I always have a series of elaborate explanations. Resistance. Emotional issues. Childhood.
Then this morning I got up and wrote.
That was it.
No breakthrough. No inspirational music. I simply sat down and started writing. And almost immediately, I felt this enormous sense of pleasure. I was happy.
That’s when I saw what I’d been doing to myself. I’d created a habit of not writing first thing in the morning, then harshly criticizing myself for failing. Even better, each time I didn’t write, I produced fresh evidence that the criticism was correct. I’d built my own case against myself!
And apparently, the whole thing could be interrupted by sitting down and writing.
What If Resistance Is Just a Habit?
That got me thinking about resistance. Writers talk about it as if it’s some enormous psychological force lurking under the desk waiting for us to open Final Draft. We call it writer’s block, fear of failure, fear of success, perfectionism, procrastination. But what if a lot of what we experience as emotional problems with writing are simply habits?
A habit is something you’ve done enough times that you no longer notice yourself doing it. Something happens. You respond in the familiar way, and because you’ve done it before, your brain assumes this must be what we do around here. In my case, I wanted to write first thing in the morning. Then I didn’t. Then I criticized myself for not doing it. Then the next morning, I repeated the entire performance. After a while, I had created a very efficient little system for proving to myself that I was right to feel bad about not writing.
This morning I did something different. I wrote. That was it. Nothing was solved intellectually. I didn’t discover the hidden psychological origin of my morning resistance. I simply interrupted the habit. And what surprised me was how good it felt. There was pleasure in doing the thing I actually wanted to do.
See the Habit Without Judging It
The first step in changing a habit is seeing it. Not judging it. Not turning it into a character flaw. Just seeing it. There I go. I’m doing that thing again. That is very different from saying, “I’m a procrastinator.” “I’m a procrastinator” sounds like an identity. “I have developed a habit of not starting when I want to start” is something much more manageable. Habits can be changed because habits are things we practice.
Interrupt the Pattern
This is where the Self-Acknowledgment Hug, or SAH, becomes important. If you notice the old habit beginning, stop and acknowledge yourself instead of immediately criticizing yourself. You give yourself the Hug and say, “I love you, [Name]. We will always be together. We will always be safe. We are enough. We demand and expect better.” The point is to stop abandoning yourself at exactly the moment when you need yourself.
Then you turn your attention toward what you prefer. Maybe for only a minute. Maybe for five minutes. You simply give the new behavior concentrated attention for a very small amount of time. Sit down. Write. Notice what it feels like to be doing the thing you said you wanted to do.
The other place I see this constantly is self-criticism. A writer puts down a sentence and immediately decides it isn’t good enough. She changes it. Then she dislikes the new sentence. She changes it again. Twenty minutes later, she has rewritten twelve words six times and is now convinced she has lost whatever talent she once had. We could construct a very impressive psychological explanation for this, or we could simply notice the habit. Write, judge, correct, judge again.
Practice What You Prefer
What happens if, for five minutes, you replace that habit? You write without correcting. When the critical thought appears, you notice it. You do the SAH if you need to. Then you put your attention back on what you actually want: curiosity, movement, discovery, finishing the thought. You are teaching yourself that writing does not have to be immediately followed by an attack.
I think this is where we make change much harder than it has to be. We assume we have to understand resistance before we can move past it. Maybe sometimes we do. But maybe much of what we call resistance, procrastination, and emotional difficulty is simply learned behavior that has been repeated until it feels like personality.
Once you see the habit, you can choose something else. Give yourself the SAH. Decide what you would prefer. Then give that preference your complete attention for one minute, three minutes, or five minutes. Repeat it until something begins to shift.
What interested me most this morning was not that I wrote. It was that writing felt good. The behavior I had been avoiding turned out to contain the reward I had been looking for.
Apparently, sometimes the way out of procrastination is to stop studying procrastination and start enjoying writing.
At the Next Start Writing Now Webinar
If procrastination has become part of your writing routine, what might happen if you stopped judging it and tried something different? At our next FREE webinar, we’ll explore procrastination using the SAH and the Word of the Day Practice.
Step out of old patterns, quiet the inner critic, and rediscover the pleasure of simply writing. And we’ll do it together, surrounded by a supportive community of writers who understand that sometimes the best way forward is to begin.
Space is limited, so sign up today! I look forward to seeing you there.
Here’s to your personal success.
Professor Marilyn Horowitz
This Week’s Writing Prompt:
This week’s prompt is ENOUGH.
- Begin with the Self-Acknowledgment Hug and the affirmations.
- Think of the word ENOUGH. Allow any image to come to mind. Don’t search for one or try to make it meaningful. Notice what appears, and place a word representing that image in the center circle of your cluster.
- Take a breath, smile, and allow another image to come to mind. Remember, it’s perfectly okay if your images don’t seem related. Just notice what appears.
- Repeat the process until you’ve filled the remaining circles in your cluster.
- Set a timer for five minutes and write a story using the words you placed in your cluster. Don’t worry about where the story is going or whether it’s “good.” Just write.
- When the timer goes off, put your writing away. Come back and read it the next day with fresh eyes.
I’d love to hear about your experience. If you’d like to share your writing or any insights or surprises that came from the Practice, send it my way!
Substack (It’s FREE!)
If you’ve ever wondered why practices like the Self-Acknowledgment Hug and the Word of the Day Practice can make such a difference, explore my Substack.
It’s where I dig a little deeper into the neuroscience behind writing, creativity, self-connection, and personal growth, and how understanding how our brains work can help us access more of what’s already within us.
There’s a growing collection of articles waiting for you, and it’s completely free.
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