The Writing System That Will Transform Your Work Habits

The best way to keep your butt in the chair

Photo by Swello on Unsplash

On the calendar, you can see the big red letters: “WRITE”. You’ve blocked off your whole morning for this. The kids are in school. Your spouse is at work. The house is finally quiet. You open your computer to a new document and poise your fingers over the keyboard.

Except all your words leave you. Every single one, even the Spanish ones you learned in high school. Gone. Confident that at least some will find their way onto your page, you stare out the window. Thinking is part of writing, you remind yourself.

You remember that you used to keep an idea notebook in the bookshelf upstairs. As you pass by your kitchen, you realize that the sink is full of dishes and if you leave it too long the food will crustify on the plates, so you pause—just real quick—to take care of it, certain that the unfinished kitchen work was holding back your creative process.

The clock on your phone reminds you that you have two hours left, and you decide that they would be best spent at the cafe across town, the new one everyone is talking about. A change of scenery is just what your creative juices need to get flowing, so you slip your laptop into its sleeve and head out.

Soon, you’re settled in a corner booth sipping your lavender latte across from a friend you ran into on your way in. Before you know it, it’s time to pick up the kids and you’ve barely strung together a few sentences on the page.

The age-old problem

Sound familiar? This is what my writing time looked like for months as I found more and more creative ways to avoid my work. I browsed the library. I shopped at thrift stores. I read at the beach. I went to a museum. There was nothing wrong with these activities — in fact, I could argue they fed my creative soul — but without dedicated time in which to actually put words on the page, I was floundering and failing to meet my writing goals.

It was during this time that I came across Kathleen Norris, who articulated this problem so well in her book Acedia and Me:

“Even as I fret over juggling responsibilities to my aging mother, my disabled sister, my friends, and my art, I have to admit that it is not obligation I fear, but my distressing eagerness to squander the precious time I do have in running from the emotional demands that writing will make of me.”

Wisdom from the experts

One of my favorite ways to procrastinate in my writing life is to read books about writing. It pays off in surprising ways and this time was no exception. This time, two ideas from two different authors joined together to give birth to an accountability system. When I started using this system, my proverbial butt stayed in my chair and I was able to use my dedicated writing time to actually write. I did not get distracted around the house. I did not leave on any fun adventures until my writing time was up.

The first idea came from Louise DeSalvo in her book The Art of Slow Writing. She draws our attention to both Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway who kept something like a ship’s log. Originally, a ship’s log was used to catalog the various trips a boat or an aircraft carrier would take, noting departure and arrival times, incidents, and repairs needed.

Hemingway kept a chart of his daily output and recorded his word count. Woolf kept a dated diary keeping track of her progress through her book, from conceptualization to revision. DeSalvo notes:

“We writers so often make lists of what we have to do, but we don’t often record what we’ve accomplished — our “done” list, the equivalent of a ship’s log. How often do we think about our writing day, reflect upon what we’ve accomplished, congratulate ourselves for work well done, and make a record that we can refer to in order to help us document how a book was written?”

So the first step of my accountability game plan was to choose one of my many blank notebooks to serve as my ship’s log. The next step was to find an easy framework for recording my work.

The solution came to me as I was reading Dancing on the Head of a Pen by Robert Benson. He describes the job of a writer as wearing different hats: a black beret, a well-word baseball cap, and a brown fedora.

“Beret Man” is the artist and his job is to get words down on the page, discover the story, dream up interesting details, scribble as many sentences as he can without worrying too much about quality. Beret Man needs lots of love and encouragement, and cheering on.

“Gamer Man” then puts on his baseball cap and gets down to the nitty gritty of editing, rewriting, and revising the pile of wild sentences the Beret Man gave him. His work is to fashion the words on the page into something golden, cutting out the garbage, shifting the order of things, substituting stronger word choices. This is the hard, dirty work of the craft of writing.

“Fedora Man” shows up when the work of the Gamer Man is done. He concerns himself with shipping out the work and making sure the words reach readers. He writes proposals and cover letters and pitches. Down the road, he’ll work with agents on marketing plans, but for now, Fedora Man writes copy for social media posts, builds an email list, and cultivates relationships with other writers.

It’s important to note that all three hats may be worn on the same day as you might be starting a new project, editing an older manuscript, and making a bit of headway in the marketing realm as you promote the work you’ve already published. Benson writes:

“A writer has three jobs. Write the work. Make the work as good as possible. Find the work a home and a crowd of folks to love it. It helps to remember which hat I am wearing as I go along.”

The benefits of the system

Thinking in terms of the writer’s hats has been useful in recording my progress in my ship’s log. Every day at the end of my writing session, I report which hat I was wearing and what I accomplished while I wore it.

Keeping a ship’s log has helped me in two ways. The first benefit is that it motivates me to treat my writing time as sacred, and thus improves my self-discipline: no more getting distracted with the dishes or gallivanting around town when I know I should be working. (I should note here that I reward myself after I finish a writing session by squeezing in a bit of fun before it’s time to pick my kids up from school.)

The ship’s log holds me accountable. To add in another layer of accountability, I’ve considered taking a picture of the week’s log pages to show to a writing friend (or any supportive friend) as extra incentive to get my work done.

The second benefit is seeing daily progress towards my goals. Sometimes I feel like I don’t accomplish much unless I have a big pile of sentences to show for it, but now I realize — thanks to the three hats — that there are many tasks that count as writing work. I go to bed at night knowing I took steps towards my writing dreams. Instead of reckoning with a to-do list with many tasks left unfinished, the ship’s log helps me feel confident and successful about what I did get done.

Your turn

There are many writing routines, rituals, and systems out there, but if you’re like me and you need more encouragement and self-discipline in your writing life, I highly recommend keeping a ship’s log and keeping track of what hats you’re wearing!

PS: This article originally appeared here!