How to build a daily writing habit: 6 months of daily blog posts
I’ve written a daily blog post for nearly 6 months now.
In that time my blog has had lots more readers and I have created copious amounts of content that I can break down and use in other places - like on social media or repurposed to create new videos.
I have also thoroughly enjoyed the discipline of creating a daily writing habit and setting aside a specific time in the day to just sit down and write for a while.
In this post I’m going to break down the system I’ve been using to create my daily blog posts.
1: Make time (and protect it)
My daily writing hour is between 4.30-5.30am each morning.
I get up each morning at 4am. I then meditate for 15 minutes, make a cup of tea and sit down to write.
The only way you’ll build up a routine with anything is if you carve out time for it and then protect that time at all costs and keep it allocated for the purpose you intended it for.
I could easily get distracted by emails or social media but I choose not to do that. I don’t even open my emails until after my blog post has been published - it’s a rule I have so I am forced to not get distracted from it.
If you want to build a daily writing habit you don’t have to do it in the crazy morning hours like I do. I happen to be at my most alert at that time of day. But you might find you work best later in the day or in the evenings.
Think of the time when you’re at your most alert and most creative and choose an hour from that period as your daily writing time.
2: Know what you want to write
The next thing I do is to have a plan for what I’m going to write.
I have chosen to write a daily blog post with my writing hour. You may have something else you prefer to write - e.g. perhaps you want to write a book or you have a YouTube channel you’re starting so want to use the time to write scripts for your videos.
The important thing to know is what you want to use the time for and what you are going to be creating and putting out in to the world.
3: Have a process
Writing and creating content is a process that involves more than just writing. It involves consuming ideas, processing these, thinking about them and then creating new content based on what you’ve learned.
For me the process of creating content involves a number of steps:
Reading/Consuming - I don’t think you can continuously have new ideas without consuming lots of information. I love consuming content and I do this in lots of ways - e.g. listening to podcasts on my daily walk, listening to audiobooks while I’m driving, reading my kindle before I sleep.
Capturing - if an idea resonates I use my quick capture system in Notion to put this idea down quickly. I then batch process all my ideas at the end of each week.
Creating - this is the actual creation phase, my morning writing period
Distributing - this involves sharing what I’ve written by posting it up on social media or breaking it down to smaller bite size pieces of content for distribution.
4: Have a plan
Each week when I’m processing any quick capture notes I’ve made out on my walks or whenever I’ve had them I will think about these in more detail and put ideas in to my content calendar in Notion.
Here’s what the published version of that calendar looks like.
But I also have blog post ideas mapped out many months in advance in this calendar as well.
Each morning when I sit down to write I don’t have to come up with an idea. I just see what I’ve planned to write for that day and sit down and create that piece of content.
You can see that in this image here. I am currently writing the post for today, which you can see is in planning/idea stage on my calendar and allocated for writing today.
If I get to a day and don’t feel like writing about that topic (which happens quite frequently!) I can easily move things around on the calendar and choose a different topic.
I also sometimes have a completely new idea I want to write about for the day, which also happens frequently. On those days I simply shift the planned blog post to a different day later in the month.
The point is that each day I don’t sit down with a blank screen and have to come up with everything from scratch. I do the thinking about blog post topics in advance and this makes it much easier to avoid writers block during the creation phase each morning.
It’s also very satisfying to move the tag from ‘planned’ to ‘published’ once the post is published!
By the way - you can get my content calendar system HERE if you’re interested.
5: Have a template
The other thing that makes it easy to create the posts each day is to have a template that I use to plug in my content.
Here’s what one of my blog templates looks like in Squarespace, the platform I use for my website. You can see that the layout is all prepared and I simply have to write my content out in the spaces provided.
Having to create this from scratch each day would be such a pain so this saves me about 5-10 minutes (which doesn’t seem like much but adds up quickly over a week and a year of writing daily) and makes the process much more streamlined.
I have a few different templates for the different types of posts I write. I also have different calls to action at the ends of these templates so they are mixed up a bit as well.
I also have a template in Canva that I use to create the graphic for each of my blog posts. All I have to do there is change the image I use for the graphic and update the texts with the title of the post. Here’s the one I created for today.
6: Have boundaries
The other rule I have about my daily blog posts are that they have to get written in the hour I’ve allocated myself. This means I have constraints around not making these ‘perfect’ and also making sure I get something published each day. It also means the posts are typically not too long - which makes them easier for my community to consume each day but also easier to ensure they get published!
Sometimes the post takes me a little longer to create, but more often than not I’m able to stick to the hour I’ve set myself.
7: Track progress
The other thing I get a lot of satisfaction out of is watching my content calendar fill up with green ‘published’ labels (like you can see in the image above). You can see that every now and then I miss a day of publishing, but more often than not I’m consistently getting a new post published each day. This is a rewarding pattern to see in my content calendar and keeps me motivated to keep creating each day!
So if you’ve been wanting to build up a daily writing habit but haven’t been sure how to do it then I hope this post has given you some ideas.
To summarise, here’s what you need to do:
Make time (and protect it)
Know what you want to write (and why)
Have a process
Have a plan
Have a template
Have boundaries
Track progress
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Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
