We’re all so busy – and if not busy with our personal life and work, there’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al; we can plug ourselves right into music or have movies and tv instantly appear on our computer screens.There’s so much noise and news and fun to be had that we never ever have to be patient or deal with our inner lives. But no matter how fast the world zips along, if you want to write you need some silence and space, time to slow down to figure out what you think and feel. Writing needs to become a practice – not a big deal, simply what you do every day, whether for fifteen minutes or five hours.

Since I’m teaching a ten week course this spring, I’ve set my students a goal to form a writing practice in ten weeks. And here’s a suggestion for you, dear reader. Decide on a length of time – it’s been said that it takes three weeks to form a habit so maybe try at least three weeks – to focus on your writing. Be selfish with your time. Create a writing practice for yourself. If you only write when you’re in the mood you’ll end up just writing little bits and pieces of stuff once in awhile. To be a writer you write. It’s that’s simple.

In her latest book, The Art of Slow Writing, Louise De Salvo says “Slow writing is a meditative act: slowing down to understand our relationship to our writing, slowing down to determine our authentic subjects, slowing down to write complex works, slowing down to study our literary antecedents….It’s one way to find – or return to – our authentic selves.”

(And isn’t this why we write, to discover our authentic selves?)

Franz Kafka said: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked…”

Michael Ventura wrote a famous essay for writers about staying in the room and being still – “The Talent of the Room”. (You can find it online.)

Here’s a To Do list I gave my students last week to help them form a writing practice:

– Read at least one book a week. If reading isn’t already a habit in your life, turn it into one. Reading feeds your writing.

– Start a journal. Write in it every single day for ten weeks. Every single day. You can write just a few lines about the weather. Or you can write about your deepest dreams and fears and secrets. Or you can write about not knowing what to write. You can write anything. There are no rules for keeping a journal. The point is simply to make a habit of checking in with your own thoughts and feelings every single day.

– Figure out what time of day you’re most alive and awake and can focus on writing. Set this time in stone. Mark it on your calendar. Keep the time sacred. Five days a week go to your desk/table/laptop at this time no matter how busy you are, and no matter how bored you get sitting there remain in your chair for whatever length of time you can fit into your schedule. Eventually you’ll start writing and it’ll turn into a habit, a writing practice.