The Writer’s Work Ethic: How To Create It, Maintain It, And Sustain It

An award-winning journalist and the bestselling author of eight books explains why having good work ethic is essential to writing success.

By Natasha Khullar Relph

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This is a post I wrote in March 2014 on my personal blog. Republishing here because it’s a question I hear often. Enjoy!

I wrote 65,000 words in February and so far, I’ve written 9,500 words in March. This is simply because I have a daily deadline that I have to meet no matter what and all the excuses in the world aren’t going to save me from the repercussions of failing to deliver.

So I deliver.

Writers know that when there’s an axe to our heads (also politely called a “deadline”), we perform. We write. 1k, 5k, 10k, it all comes pouring out three hours before the assignment is due. In February, I had a real deadline. I was writing a course and lessons needed to go out daily. This month, I’m working on a self-imposed deadline.

Creating work ethic is important if you want to be a career writer because unless you have words on the page, you have nothing. This is especially true if you’re an author or aspiring to be one, but also if you’re a freelancer. After all, how are you going to get those assignments if you’re not in the habit of querying and how are you going to put together those queries if you’re not in the habit of writing?

I used to be of the opinion that the 1,000-word-a-day recommendation for writers was a harsh and stringent one and didn’t always work, but I’ve found that every time I hold myself to a daily word limit—be it 200 or 2,000—my productivity soars and I feel happier and more fulfilled as a writer.

Work ethic becomes increasingly important as you grow in your career and start getting ready to handle more challenging assignments, more complex works.

Here are some ways to create work ethic and why they work:

1. Have a dedicated space

This is sort of the obvious let’s-get-it-out-the-way point, so let’s. If you want to have periods of intense focus, you need a dedicated space in which to do it. This could be an office, a desk in the corner of the living room, or even your bed. As long as it’s yours and as long as that’s your space every single day, that’s fine. But make it yours.

2. Have a dedicated time

You don’t have to keep office hours, but you do need to dedicate time to your writing. Before I got married and had a child, I wrote pretty much all the time, but my writing time was unstructured. I wrote when I felt like it—which was, admittedly, most of the time—but I also didn’t write when I didn’t. This meant that I wrote for days and weeks but then I took weeks off.

Needless to say, this is neither good for your health nor your work ethic. These days, I have a very rigid schedule. I work when my kid is at play school in the morning for two hours and then I work for three hours while he has his nap and plays with my husband in the evening.

Five hours a day, 25 hours a week. It’s a very limited period of time in which to try and make a full-time living, let alone a six-figure one, so I’m extremely focused. That’s what routine does. It gives you a fixed number of hours and you have to fit your work within them, come hell or high water.

You know what? Somehow, you do.

3. Create daily targets

Having a to-do list is one thing, but if you want to create a daily writing practice, a work ethic for putting words on the page, you need to have goals and targets. Some people feel comfortable with the 1,000-words-a-day goal, but there are others who want to do a lot more or a lot less. It doesn’t matter. If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you know how many words you can realistically write in an hour, so just multiply that number with the number of hours you’ve dedicated to writing and bingo. You have the magic number.

Personally, I can write 1,000 words of good non-fiction in an hour. I’m still hesitant and clumsy with my fiction and feel like I’m on a learning curve, so I halve that and keep a 500 word target. Most days, I beat that target, which means I sometimes work ahead of schedule and that makes me extremely happy.

(P.S. In my book Shut Up and Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page I explain exactly how to create a schedule and a life that allows you to routinely hit your writing targets.)

4. Finish things

This is the trouble most writers have and because I’ve suffered from the hundred-unfinished-projects-on-my-desktop syndrome, I feel qualified to tell you to cut it out!

I mean, seriously, think about it. Wouldn’t a bad, but finished book, be better than a dozen wonderful but unfinished ones? With the bad one, at least you have the opportunity to send it out there, get feedback, learn from your mistakes, and improve. What are those unfinished manuscript pages doing? Nothing. I learned last year that if I wanted to build work ethic and if I wanted my projects to go out into the light of the world, I needed to get serious about finishing them. One at a time. Finish one, then move on to the next.

This, for a person like me, is a very difficult task. I like to have a million things on the go at once, but this also means that I spread myself too thin and end up achieving not much because none of my very many projects ever get beyond 90%. So this year, I’ve been grabbing hold of my projects by the tail, one by one, and vowing to finish them. I can’t move on to the next project until I’ve either finished the current one on my plate or abandoned it. This is why it’s do or die time for the novel. Either I’ll finish it and send it out into the world, or at some point, I’ll have had enough, abandon it and move on to the next project.

This is not a bad way for a writer to think and work.

5. Be answerable to someone

It’s easy to tell yourself three days in a row that you just didn’t feel like writing. But it’s harder to say it to a neighbor or a friend or a mother. I like reward systems for achieving targets, but you know what I like even better? Punishment for not meeting them. If you’re truly committed to your goal and don’t have any reasonable excuses for not meeting your targets, I suggest you punish yourself every time you don’t put in the effort. For instance, on the days that you haven’t written your 1,000 words you could take over the 7 a.m. dog-walking duty or skip an episode of your favorite TV show or ban yourself from Facebook for 24 hours.

6. When you’re doing something, do it

When you’re writing your novel, are you actually writing your novel? Or are are you asking for advice on Facebook, posting your word count on Twitter, and starting up a Skype chat with your writing group? Writing is writing. So make sure that’s what you’re doing in the time you’ve allotted for yourself.

7. Practice timed writing

When I find myself drifting during days when the muse is hungover and passed out in the corner of my office (or being spiteful by going to some other writer’s office), I set myself 15-minute intervals. Write for 15 minutes, then see if you want to continue. If yes, write for 15 minutes more. Do you want to continue? Yes? Write for another 15 minutes. Do you want to write some more? No. Go play. You’ve earned it.

So those are the things I’ve learned from my month of being a crazed maniac trying to fit writing into my life and the lessons I’ll take forward for the rest of the year.

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