Laura Belgray How to Write Daily

https://blog.usejournal.com/im-a-lazy-person-who-rejects-99-of-self-help-tips-
5f6b7496829f

I’m a Lazy Person Who Rejects 99% of Self-

Help Tips. Here’s the One Trick that Kept
Me Productive, Even in 2020.

Laura Belgray
Sep 30, 2020 · 7 min read

How to salvage your goals and dreams from

the dumpster fire that is this year.
Even those of us who were physically healthy in 2020 have had a solid half-year of letting
ourselves off the hook:

I’m not in a place to write my book/ do my art/ work out/ be productive, because pandemic. {cue
soft, Stuart Smalley voice} And that’s ooookay.

Sure, we started off thinking we were going to do big things during lockdown — write songs,
write a novel, learn Greek — but most of this year became an extended emotional sick day. A
big ol’ doctor’s note not to do anything hard, because reality is hard enough.

(And hey, as someone who milked mononucleosis to get out of most of 11th grade, I’m no
stranger to the love of an ongoing excuse to do diddly-squat.)

Welp, looks like the pandemic isn’t going anywhere for a while. Winter is coming. Covid spikes.
More quarantine? Who knows what the next six months or even full year will bring, but it’s time
to face it:

The freeze on our membership to the Productive Humans Club is over. Grace period’s up.

Time to resume life and get our shit together.

I have one trick for doing that. You might call it a “hack.”

It’s simple, involves iced coffee, and could salvage your goals and dreams from the dumpster
fire that is 2020.

Miraculously, it kept me on track during this period. I credit it with making me a Real Writer.

See, for decades, I was a writer who didn’t write.

So much (not) so that I was going to partner with my other writer friend who didn’t write, to
write a book called “How Not to Write.”

As expected, we blew off our writing sessions and never really got it going. Proof of concept!

Yes, I wrote for my copywriting clients. I wrote TV promos, website copy, video scripts. Then,
blog posts and emails. At least those were my own, but I still felt the weeks, months, and years
slipping away without me producing my Big Thing.

Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.

Every night, I went to bed with the pleasant delusion, “Tomorrow I’ll start it.” Whatever “it”
was.

Sound like 2020 much?

In 2017, at age 47, I got sick of myself and made it official: I was writing a book.

This would be different from other times I’d made it official — to strangers at cafes in 2001; at a
small birthday party in 2004; to my husband every time I signed up for another workshop, and so
on.

This time, I announced it in an email to my whole subscriber list. I asked them for accountability.
Subject line: “Can I count on you, {first name}?”

YES! They answered. They would hold my feet to the fire.

I wrote regularly. I was on a roll. Until…

Until I skipped a day and thought, “I’ve got momentum, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.”

Until the skipped day turned into a few, and then multiplied like a Gremlin fed after midnight.

My deep shame lifted briefly when I heard a podcast interview where blockbuster author Cheryl
Strayed said she writes in infrequent bursts, not every day.

Yay, that’s how I’ll write my bestseller optioned by and starring Reese Witherspoon, too!

If anyone asked, “How’s your book coming?” I said “It’s coming! You know, in bursts.”

I don’t need to tell you, there were no bursts.

Then, one summery night a year later, I went to dinner with a new friend, Jen.

She was a fitness trainer, so she knew about habits.

Over a shared piece of simply grilled fish with lemon wedge (she looks so good, I was inspired
to eat like her for one meal) I told her about my struggle to keep up a writing streak with my
book.

“What I want,” I said, digging into our side of spinach, “is to feel about writing the way I
feel about working out or showering — disgusting in my body if if I haven’t done it all
day.”

Jen nodded. “You know, there are ways of creating habits like that. You want me to tell you
one?”

I said sure — wearily.

I knew, and had written marketing copy for, every kind of coach: life coach, diet coach,
creativity coach, success coach, money mindset coach, abundance coach, spiritual juiciness
empowerment coach. And yes, those are all things. I’d co-written years’ worth of the advice-
loaded Marie TV, my friend Marie Forleo’s show with the tagline, “The place to be to create a
business and life you love.”

I had heard every kind of self-development technique under the everloving sun…without really
trying any of it.

Whether it’s a tip, a tool, or a rule, I always feel it’d be good for other people, not me.

Lay it on me, though. I still like hearing the tip, even if I’m too lazy to ever use it.

Jen obliged.

“You create a trigger,” she said. “Some event or habit that happens without fail, that can mark
the start of the action you want to take. And then, when you’re done, you celebrate in some little
way.”

I’d already heard plenty about the celebration part. Because coaches.

I’m not motivated by the promise that, when I’m done, I’ll get to take a dance break or indulge in
a decadent square of sea-salt chocolate. It feels stupid — no offense to all you dance-break and
chocolate-break coaches. (I’m sure that’s a thing.)

The trigger part, though: that was new to me.

I thought of a trigger right away. I told Jen I’d try it the next morning, which I did. Lo and
behold, I stuck with it. And it worked.

It has continued to, even through the Pandemic — a time when, otherwise, I would have
promised myself, “I’m going to use this time to start my book.” {Cue sad, knowing trombone.}

So here’s how I do it.

THE TRIGGER: Iced coffee.

I bring a large iced coffee home from O Cafe, the place on my corner, every single morning.
Even in a snowstorm. It’s the most reliable part of my day.

(During the height of the pandemic, I made my own at home. But I’m back to my coffee-shop
stop. Gotta support.)

As soon as I get home, I place the iced coffee, its moisture condensing all over the plastic cup,
next to my laptop (as evidenced by the water rings all over my glass desk).

That triggers the action.

THE ACTION: Write, muthaf*cka!
I plop my butt in the chair and open a new browser window. No Instagram, no looking up those
Nikes I just saw some girl rocking on 6th Ave, no email that just caught my eye. I turn on the
DO NOT DISTURB setting on my laptop so all distractions can wait till after I do these two
things:

Thing 1
Free-write on 750words.com, my favorite free journaling site, as a warmup. It counts your words
as you go, and the word count turns green when you hit 750. This takes me around fifteen
minutes.

Thing 2
Write for thirty minutes, minimum, on my book.

For this exercise, I gave myself the following rules:

 It doesn’t have to be good.

 It doesn’t have to be linear.
 I don’t have to know where or how it fits in with the rest of what I’ve written.
 I just have to write something.

THE RESULT: I wrote it, muthaf*cka!

I have miles to go with the actual book once there’s a book deal. However: after getting no more
than two chapters on the page over the year before…

I started writing every morning, accumulating well over 100k words.

Every day, plunking down my iced coffee, I did my 750 words and then picked a memory or
thought:

 Stealing money from my mother in 8th grade to go play Tempest and Donkey Kong.
 A Proustian take on the smell of Chinese takeout.
 My disastrous foursome with a world-famous movie director.

Much of what I wrote is garbage. I’ll have to cut it like mold from a block of expired
Vermont cheddar.

But in those pages, there’s a ton of gold (or at least perfectly edible cheese) that I wouldn’t have
created if I were writing it all in one dreadful “spurt.”
Two years in…
Out of that “triggered” work came a proposal, an agent, and other things I can’t yet talk about.

Even when I’m paused on the actual book writing, I still use my daily trigger to sit down and
write in 750words.com. That way, on the days I don’t also write something for public
consumption — like an email to my list, an article, or a post on Instagram — I’ve at least written
something.

It’s what I needed:

A habit like showering, working out, or brushing my teeth, where I feel physically gross until I
get it done.

Even more compelling, I associate — or, better yet, confuse — the act of writing with drinking
my iced coffee.

I’m no clinical psychologist, but that’s some next level Pavlov shit, amiright?

Note to panicked non-coffee-drinkers: you can use tea!

Your trigger doesn’t even have to be a beverage or anything you put in your mouth. James Clear,
bestselling author of Atomic Habits, can give you way more suggestions and a more
comprehensive breakdown.

I, myself, needed the idea simplified by a friend, over grilled fish.

Thanks to that dinner…

I’m now a writer who writes.

A friend said recently, “I’ll be honest. When you talked about your book two years ago, I didn’t
think you’d really do it. Like, ever.” I secretly didn’t think so, either — so I can’t be too insulted.

If you’re exhausted by breaking promises to yourself, especially about how you’d use all this
mythical “extra time” during the pandemic, I see you! And I recommend trying out a trigger.

If you’re waiting till things “settle down” and feel more normal, well…bookmark this for 2030.