Someone was sleeping outside her tent right next to her and how to make good writing habits

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

A lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write.

Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time to be a writer. That’s just how our brains and process work. There are some writers who manage to get 10 days of alone time and writer time and they power through a book in that time, but most of us aren’t that wealthy or that lucky.

That means to be a writer, we have to create the habit of writing.

This is where James Clear’s method comes into play. This guy has built an empire around helping people create habits. And he believes there are four steps to creating a habit.

Those steps are:

• Cue
• Craving
• Response
• Reward

This man has a ton of books and information all over the internet and bookshelves about this, but very basically, what he defines each as is:

The Cue

This triggers your brain to do the behavior.

He writes: “It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction.”

The Craving

This is the motivation, the force, the desire, the reason to act.

He writes: “What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained.”

The Response

This is the habit. It might be sitting at your desk at 8 p.m. every night and writing. It might be writing 250 words during lunch or waiting to pick up your kid from swim practice. It’s the habit.

“Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it. If you want to dunk a basketball but can’t jump high enough to reach the hoop, well, you’re out of luck,” he writes.

The Reward

These are things that satisfy our craving.

He writes, “Rewards are the end goal of every habit. . . .We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.”

So, we sit down and write every day and eventually we get a book. That’s super simplified, but whatever.

There’s also that second part about how they teach us, right?

Clear writes, “Rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.”

So, to build a habit, he says, to change your behavior, you want to think of each step (he calls them laws) to do the behaviors. The keys, he said are these (all direct from the post linked above and below):

It's pretty cool stuff, and you should probably check out his book or site if you're into this system and it rings true for you.

But for writers, especially, his clues on how to break bad habits and build new ones are just wonderful. Give yourself a really obvious cue that it's time to write (an alarm/notification/specific time), and make it attractive (light a candle/put on music you actually like) and make it easy (make small word count or revision goals) and make it satisfying.

DOG TIP OF THE PODCAST

Pogie has some anxiety, but she works by the cue system. She makes the things she wants attractive to you via hugs and puppy dog looks.

COOL EXERCISE

Stuck not being able to build a writing habit? Check out MasterClass' morning pages exercise here.

PLACES TO SUBMIT

Crook’s Corner Prize Eligibility: Debut novels set predominantly in the American South, published btwn January 1, 2023 and May 15, 2024 Prize: $5,000 Entry Fee: $35 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction Eligibility: All writers Prize: $1,000 + publication Entry fee: $30 Deadline: May 31, 2024

Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize Eligibility: Poets under 40 years of age Prize: $1,000 Entry fee: $15 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest Eligibility: Writers who have not published a book or a book coming out before April 2025 Prize: $2,000 + publication + review from Aevitas Creative Management Entry fee: $30 Deadline: May 15, 2024

OTHER LINKS

Our random thought came from here.

And here's a link to James Clear's post and page again.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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