One of the biggest myths about writing

Welcome to my new blog The Scribbling Pen (get it?). Here I’ll be writing about books, the publishing industry, writing tips and what’s it’s really like being an author. If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover (requests for essays on astrophysics or football tactics will be respectfully declined) then please contact me via the form on this website.

First up I’m tackling something that in my opinion is one of the publishing industry’s biggest myths: You have to write every day.

No, actually, you don’t.

I can see where the advice comes from. Researchers for The British Psychological Society discovered that to found a habit it needed to be repeated every day for 84 days. It makes sense that if you want to be a writer then you need to write often; scheduling a time to write for a short while each day is one way to ensure you get words down on a page.

It’s not, however the only way. The vast majority of us have jobs, health or other commitments that prevent us from having free time to write every day. Here’s when it’s important to remember that quality is better than quantity. Five thousand words in a draft sounds impressive, but not they’ve been bashed out just to up a word count and 4,900 of them have to be cut because they don’t follow your plot or structure.

What’s just as important as writing time is thinking time. I can’t write every day due to health reasons but the time I spend resting is hugely beneficial. This is when I daydream: playing with plots in my mind, getting to know characters, trying out dialogue in my head and formulating a novel’s structure.

Time when you’re not concentrating on a particular physical task and your imagination is free to roam, such as when you’re in the shower, taking a walk, or preparing for sleep is when your creativity can peak. These moments are when I have those serendipitous flashes of inspiration and the answer to a book issue I’ve been mulling over can suddenly appear as if by magic.

Yes. writers need to write but we also need time for reading and for thinking. Your unique creative input and vision is precisely what makes your writing stand out from other people’s and slop regurgitated by AI.

So if health, work, or just plain old life demand your time for a while and your laptop remains firmly closed don’t see it as a setback: you can still have valuable thinking time. Keep a notebook close or an app on your phone to jot down ideas and, when you are ready, go back to your idea or manuscript with fresh, inspired eyes.

We all have different ways of working. If you need the regime of writing every day to make you stick at it, then go ahead. But just as some writers prefer to plot out every chapter before they start their novel and others hit the ground running with only an idea of how to begin, writing every day isn’t the only way to work. Don’t let the myth put you off.