Duration, Frequency, Intensity

Building a sustainable writing practice despite all this

Hello darlings –

WHEW! WHAT THE FUCK. This is not a good timeline! I hope you are surviving (not expecting thriving, but if so, YAY) right now.

It has been a hot fucking minute since I’ve been here. I actually have a bunch of missives written but <gestures around> WTF, y’all. I just don’t know if anyone wants to hear my little dumb thoughts about writing. Then I got this MHAWS NGL (send me your questions please!):

Okay, I got you. I got you.

Writing retreat!!

First! Kelly Clancy and I are excited to go to war torn Portland (it is not war torn) to host our next writing retreat in July 2026. Interested? Great. All the info is here. Come write with us, where you will get a chance to employ all the tricks below!

When and how to actually fit in writing:

Often, when I talk to people about writing (or silently observe them talk about writing online), they often bemoan the lack of an ‘ideal’ writing environment – not enough time, too many distractions, not ‘feeling’ like writing when you finally sit down to write. One of the problems (from my very biased perspective) is that we aren’t training for writing. We are writing like we don’t need any fucking training. But often, this is like walking onto a marathon course and going “oh yeah. I can run this. No problem” without having run more than a mile in years. That’s bananapants! So why would you expect the same thing for writing?

So let’s borrow from sports training and talk about training for a writing practice through duration, frequency, and intensity. Yes, this are also how you talk about manic episodes. And rainfall. Yes you could totally apply this to other parts of your life. I will not be discussing that in today’s class.

Duration:

By duration, I mean: how long do you write for, when you write? What is the actual time you spend writing? How many short blocks, how many long blocks?

When people say they don’t have time to write, they mean: I don’t have long block of time where no one will bother me and I can just THINK MY BIG THOUGHTS. That’s important! That’s one of the best things about a writing retreat for me – I can just really DIG IN and make a lot of progress. I firmly believe that some projects cannot come fully into being without a lot of long duration writing blocks.

But to say that’s the only way to write is utter and complete bullshit.

Some questions to ask yourself:

- What is the ideal amount of time for you to write? Many people seem to generally think that longer is better, but… I simply disagree! My ideal writing block is 2 hours long.

- How long do you ACTUALLY write for when you write? I mean, really. Not – how long do you write for until you check your fucking email? Until you log onto social media? Until you remember about that dentist appointment that needs to be moved and WOW also all those other things? That’s your actual duration (sad).

- Can you mess with your duration in ways that will help you actually work during long periods? For example, increasing your writing time by 15 minutes each week during the same block or alternating days where you write for longer stretches and for shorter periods?

Frequency:

I’ve posted a lot about how I try to write every weekday, ideally first thing in the morning, ideally for about 2 hours. That’s my jam. How often I write is important is, in my opinion, more important than either how long I write or how intensely I engage in writing.

For people building a writing practice – whether you are entirely new to this or you are trying to get back to it – writing regularly can be the key to building the writing practice.

The thing about building a frequent writing practice is that the more you do it, the easier it is to slip back into it after time away. So build the habit now and then after the semester gets WILD and you have no time to write for several weeks, you can easily come back to the practice.

But don’t overdo it! Your brain (and body) won’t be used to it! Jumping like someone who has regularly been writing 20+ hours a week is a great way to set yourself up for failure – you won’t be able to regularly concentrate and you risk burning out.

Intensity:

This one is harder to measure in the writing world! We aren’t simply pushing that speed or incline up on our treadmill. But we all know what intense writing looks like, compared to less intense writing, right? For me, this is often particular points in a project – when I’m building a dataset or a theory section for a project, when I’m doing the final edits on a project before submitting it, when I’m finishing an R&R…

Hmmm… now that I think of it, these are also all the chokepoints in my research pipeline… places where I have the hardest time pushing projects from idea / data analysis à full rough draft (missing that big theory section) or from polished draft to submitted (missing those final edits) or when I’m doing an R&R (I hatesss them). My brain doesn’t WANT to work this hard!

Intensity is also relative to your current state of training! What is a really intense writing session for me might look like a pretty light lift for someone else who writes a lot more than I do. What is a pretty easy couple of hours writing a lit review for me might seem like running 10 miles an hour on an incline to someone else. Judge yourself on your OWN progress, not anyone else’s shit.

All together now

It is the interaction of duration, frequency, and intensity that produces the writing habit. It isn’t just time in the document, it isn’t just how many days of the week you worked on a project, and it isn’t just how intensely you pushed the project forward, but instead all of them together. And the combination can vary across time! Some weeks, you might aim for long duration, low intensity writing sessions! Others, you just have time for a few short sessions but you really fucking WORK YOUR ASS OFF during those sessions. And some weeks, you just can pop in for 20 minutes at a time, but you get lots of those blocks in.

Recovery is just as important for a writing practice:

You KNOW I think that taking time off is important. I don’t want to work on the weekends, I don’t want to work at night, I don’t want to work 10 hour days. A big part of this is that I am a better writer when I take some fucking time off to recover. Your brain needs it just like your body needs rest from physical training.

Plan your recovery days. Do the light work. Fix the citations. Or better yet – go take a walk! See people! Engage in the world! Get out from behind the keyboard! No, social media doom posting about politics is not a recovery activity!!!

XOXOX

Mirya