How to stay consistent with your writing

How to stay consistent with your writing

In the past two blog posts, I’ve explored 2 key themes about finding your writing process:

Today, I’m building on those ideas to explore a concept that a lot of people struggle with: how to stay consistent.

Consistency is key. Once you’ve found a method that works for you, it’s imperative that you keep it up. Not just for you, but for your readers.

Once you’ve committed to them, it’s important to stay committed.

I think this is so clear to me because it was drilled into my head at a young age.

A popular refrain around my house was: “When are you going to call them back?”

When I was a kid, my sister and I would get this question from my dad — a lot. If we’d agreed to talk with someone on the phone, he was very anxious for us to follow through on our obligation, even if it was just a casual agreement with a friend.

We often shrugged it off and said something like, “it’s no big deal, Dad. We’ll call them later.”

But he wouldn’t let it go. He strongly believed that if you’d agreed to talk, or said you’d call, you better do it. So he’d ask again and again until we finally called the person back.

Of course, he knew what he was talking about. It was something he’d built his own business on, and that would become very important to me as well: the principle of doing what you said you were going to do.

I’m guessing that consistency has helped you in key areas of your life already. It’s likely helped you reach some significant goals.

And it can really help with your storytelling too.

So here’s what you need to do:

Commit to a realistic, sustainable pace for all your communications efforts.

I’ve found that a lot of people — even great leaders who’ve succeeded at other massive goals — struggle to write and publish consistently.

Despite their good intentions, they find themselves unable to keep up the commitment they’ve made. A weekly e-newsletter turns into one every month... or three. A monthly newsletter turns into an apology for not writing regularly. Or a daily email turns into... radio silence.

It’s completely understandable. Writing can be challenging, and time consuming. And it’s not just the writing so much as it is the other stuff: Planning and thinking. Turning a first draft into a final draft. Formatting. Design. Marketing. And so on.

What’s more, it can be easy to exhaust your initial ideas. The more regularly you write, of course, the more frequently you need to come up with new content.

So before you start any writing project, I encourage you to commit to a format and schedule you can stick with.

A good rule of thumb here: Think about a cadence that’s probably sustainable… and then lower it. If you think you could write a newsletter every week, start with every two weeks. If you want to write every single day, maybe shoot for 5 days a week.

Even if the pace is slower than you’d like, it still adds up.

For example, my newsletter comes out every two weeks. That’s a pace that works for me. It’s not everyday, but so far I’ve released 139 newsletters.

139 pieces of writing would go a long way towards writing a book, developing thought leadership, or building a body of work, wouldn’t it?

In my experience, it’s better to go with a little bit less output in favour of quality and consistency (and your own wellbeing).

Stay tuned, because in the next post I'll show you how to ensure your writing is consistent with not only its delivery, but also with its impact.

Meanwhile, for more on finding your pace, check out this story: camilledeputter.com/blog/pace

What pace will you commit to? Comment and let me know!