The Importance of Habits and Good Friends

I think in every area of our lives we have natural ebbs and flows. Some days we just wake up rested, the words come easy, or we're just in a good mood. Other days we're inexplicably grumpy, dinner burns, we're late for work, and the words wouldn't come out of us if we pulled them with a team of horses. And we have days everywhere in between.

Over the years I've noticed two things that become particularly important on those down days. These two things are the only things I've found that help at all in maintaining your forward momentum on those days when you really just feel like doing nothing but eating kettle corn and diet cream soda and watching an entire season of Project Runway.

Those two things are habits and good friends.

When the creative juices are simply not flowing, you can still use the momentum of habit to get a blog post done, post on social media, pitch an article to a magazine, query a few agents, and even write a couple paragraphs of your WIP. It's not those rare ideal days when we get 1000 words down with a snap, but its definite, measurable progress. If you know that every day when you get in from work, while dinner is in the oven its agent querying or article pitching time, you can use the habit to keep you moving forward. It's almost like muscle memory.

It's also very comforting to know that you're not going through the hard times alone. That they happen to all of us. And that is when good friends, especially other writer friends, are invaluable. Lately, my friends who support me and brainstorm with my and sympathize with me and tell me its all going to work out have been my saving grace. I hope all of you have IRL friends like that. If not, my email is in the contacts page :)

We all need to do our best to build our reservoire of good habits and good friends (which you do by being a good friend, of course) and may happy and productive days be ever on your horizon.

Sarah Allen