How to write every day in 2025
A daily writing habit is the key to unlock creative freedom and personal development.
You want to write every day, but life keeps getting in the way.
Between meetings, urgent deadlines, and evening exhaustion, your writing dreams keep getting pushed to "someday." Here's the good news: you don't need to quit your job or wake up at 4 AM to build a consistent writing practice. I have been working towards this goal for the last 2 years. Here's what worked for me.
In this guide, I'll show you how to create a realistic writing habit that sticks, even with a demanding career.
Consistency matters most.
Why bother with a daily writing goal at all?
Consistency is the only ingredient you need to become a writer. Cal Newport estimates it takes around 10 years to be successful. Most give up in their first year.
The formula for being a successful author is quite simple: publish a lot of high-quality books.
That's it.
It's hard because you don't get any rewards for your first book, or even your second and third book. Then your fourth book breaks through the noise, suddenly, you're being showered with rewards and opportunities.
Here’s the thing: You had to write those first three books to get to the fourth book. Because they taught you the hard skills you needed, or the word-of-mouth created your audience.
For example, readers of genre fiction prefer to read series. Your average Kindle Unlimited subscriber will wait for an author to release at least 3 or 4 books in a series before they read it. Why? They prefer to read the complete series at once instead of waiting between releases.
In case you need further convincing, here is a list of authors who started their careers with a consistent daily writing routine on top of their full-time jobs:
Michael Crichton
John Grisham
Tom Clancy
Lewis Carroll
Arthur Conan Doyle
Agatha Christie
Franz Kafka
Pay yourself first with time.
Ever heard of the expression "pay yourself first" in business?
Why not do the same with your most valuable resource: time. "Pay yourself first with time" means to start each day working on what's most important to you. Now, you can go through the rest of your day with a clean conscience knowing it's done. This idea comes from Oliver Burkman's book Meditations for Mortals.
For my job, I have early morning meetings, a backlog of emails, and a bazillion slack messages. Won't my coworkers notice if I don't respond right away? Trust me, they won't notice, as long as you get back to them in a reasonable amount of time.
Ideally, you would wake up earlier to write, but if that’s not possible, then do a little each morning instead. The big unlock for me was realizing I don't need to spend a lot of time on writing in the morning–though that would be nice–even 15 minutes will do.
I still prefer to write in the evening. But now I don’t feel bad when I get home from work at 8 PM and need to cook dinner, water my garden, feed my fish, oh and I should check the water quality too, and wasn't I supposed to pick something up at the pharmacy?
If I already worked on my personal projects, it's easier for me to be present with my family in the evenings instead of feeling guilty.
Work on a specific project at a specific time.
The key to writing–and life, really–is specificity.
I used to tell myself to "write" without knowing what. Every session started with a feeling of ambiguity and uneasiness. I used to start each session with this prompt generator that deletes all my work if I ever stop typing. The problem was I never made progress. I started writing stories that I never finished. It didn't feel like I was making meaningful progress.
Instead, be clear with yourself what you want to work on.
Make a meeting with yourself to work on a specific project at a specific time. Block off time on your calendar, at the same time every day, including what you will work on in the calendar invite. Over time, something weird happens–your brain naturally wants to write at the scheduled time.
How do you pick a project? Keep reading to find out.
Ambition is your motivation for long-term projects.
The way to stay motivated is to connect your daily activity to your long-term goals.
Becoming an author and writing books is a monumental task. It will take a lot of time, energy, and money. When your daily effort seems disconnected to your ambition, it will feel like a distraction. That's why I would recommend working on the book you really want to write, go right for the goal.
Let your ambition be your fuel. Start writing the book you want to write.
Track milestones don’t set deadlines.
Whenever I've set an ambitious timeline, I end up feeling discouraged and ashamed when I cannot meet it.
There will be times when work, family, or health will be a higher priority, writing will need to be de-prioritized. That's why it's important to work at a natural pace. Instead of setting deadlines, create a way to track milestones. For example, word processors such as Scrivener have a way to visualize your progress towards a word count goal.
I recommend checking in on your progress against your milestones once a week. Sunday works best for me. You need to keep reminding yourself that the daily work brings you closer to your milestones, even if it's just incremental.
We can't control when things get done, but we can control the effort we put in.
The only outcome that matters is finishing.
We have no control over whether people will read our book.
Focus on what you can control. Finishing a book is a tremendous accomplishment in itself. You want to be the type of person who finishes things, because finishing things feels good, and it's contagious. Suddenly, you'll start finishing other things too. Because you'll stop being afraid of working on hard things that take a long time.
The true reward of a daily writing habit is that it unlocks creative freedom and personal development.
My 2025 writing goals
I was debating with myself if there was any value in sharing my goals, when they may change. I try to keep the content of this newsletter educational and actionable, at the cost of resisting my urge for self-indulgent asides. But do indulge me.
The first goal is simple enough. Continue with these weekly newsletter posts.
I have been posting weekly for 7 months now. My newsletter writing routine feels established, I found a direction I like (after changing the direction and publication name 6 times), and it's getting easier too. The newsletter gives me a place to work through my thinking on a topic and practice my non-fiction writing.
For my second goal, I am excited to have started my most ambitious project yet: writing a genre fiction novel.
I am setting the modest goal of having a solid outline by the end of this year. My reach goal is to be in the serious drafting phase by the fall 2025 and be in the revision phase by Winter 2026. I plan to workshop sample chapters with my writing group throughout the year.
That might seem like a long time, and it is, but that's the point. I want to take the time I need to focus on quality and work through issues at a natural pace. Career genre fiction writers release multiple books a year. A pace necessary to sustain a consistent income to support their livelihoods. Since writing is not my career, I have the luxury of being slow.
To help me write my outline, I will watch and write about Brandon Sanderson's lectures on Science Fiction and Fantasy at BYU. I watched these lectures two years ago as edutainment, quickly without taking notes or working on a story.
Watching them today feels completely different. I learned so much about writing in these past 2 years. To get the most out of the content, I’ll be writing about it here as I apply it to my outline. So be on the lookout for that.