Ismail Kamdar – Writer’s Thoughts #03

			Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah Welcome to
episode three of writers thoughts, where today inshallah I'm going to share with you one of the
habits that has helped me to write lots of books. And I hope that this habit will help you as well
to become better at writing. So for those of you who are new to the series, writers thoughts is a
video podcast in which I share some of my reflexive reflections as a writer, and on writing
Hamdulillah. Over the past 15 years, I have written over a dozen books, and many, many blog posts
and articles of variety of different websites. And many people are asking me for advice on how to
		

			get started writing, how to get started, or publications, or what's the best route to go about it.
So I decided to put together a series of videos, where I shared some of my thoughts on this topic.
In our previous video, episode two, I discussed about self publishing versus traditional publishing
and why I chose to go with self publishing. For most of my books. Today, I want to talk about a
different topic, a habit that has helped me a lot as a writer, and I believe it's a habit that will
help anyone who is aspiring to be a writer. And that is the habit of forcing yourself to write 1000
words every day. Now, where does this habit come from? So I was reading the biographies of a variety
		

			of authors. And I was reading the book on writing by what's his name, she forgot the name, Stephen
King has the famous auto auto. Now I don't read these horror books, I really care for that genre.
But this is a man who's written a lot of books in his lifetime. So I read his book on writing is
actually the name of the book or writing. And in this book, he mentioned his habit of writing 3000
words every single day. That's how he's able to put together so many books to write 3000 words a
day. Now, to get started. I thought 3000 Didn't seem very plausible for me at the time actually
working towards it now. But when I got started about eight years ago, I said, Okay, I can do 1000
		

			words a day. Right? And so I forced myself to write 1000 words every day. And this has been a
consistent habit of mine for over eight years. Now. What does this habit look like? And how does it
benefit me? And how does it help me to write books, a lot of people get stuck with this, especially
when they get writer's block, then they end up not writing something for a few days, I tend to at
least force myself to write anything, even if I'm dealing with so called writer's block. So this is
what I do. Every day, I force myself to sit for one hour, and just write, it doesn't matter what it
is. But I force myself to sit and write until I have written at least 1000 words.
		

			If I'm working towards a book, I will use that time to write the book. If I'm not writing a book, I
may use the time to write a blog post an article, or research people, or even just a journal.
		

			On the days where my brain is really, really preoccupied, and I can't think of anything to write, I
will use that time to write to myself, to do a mind dump to do some creative thinking, to do some
idea generation to explore my thoughts and feelings, to try and figure out what's wrong, why I'm
unable to generate new ideas, but I'll use it to write something.
		

			Now, some of you may be thinking that as an author, if you're not writing your book, and you just
writing to yourself, isn't this a waste of time? Shouldn't you be working on your book. And my
response to that is that it's never a waste of time. Because when you are writing on other things,
specifically, when you're doing a mind dump, or idea generation, or creative thinking, or exploring
your thoughts and feelings, you are allowing space in your mind for new ideas, you are getting all
of this out of your system, and you're allowing space in your mind that your ideas, you're also
developing a few very good habits by doing this. Number one, you're getting into the habit of
		

			writing consistently on a daily basis. Number two, you get into the habit of writing faster. Because
the more often you do this, the faster you get at it. Number three, you develop the habit of writing
better, because of course, if you're doing something every day, and you're trying to improve, you
are going to get better at it. But one of the things that happens to me when I'm doing this is that
somewhere down the line, an idea will be sparked for my next book or online course. So I may be just
journaling for three or four days on end, you know, doing an hour of journaling every day. And in
the journaling. I may end up writing a sentence or a paragraph or a page that gives me an idea for
		

			an entire book on a tight deadline called online course. And once that idea
		

			Is there once the ideas in my mind that I'm firing on all cylinders, you know what, humbler once
again, to the flow of things, I sometimes write for three or four hours, writing 3000 to 5000 words
a day, really get into a state of flow. But am I able to do that if I don't have this habit of
writing every single day. So for those of you who are dealing with writer's block, and you don't
know how to move forward, you don't know how to be consistent with your writing, I highly recommend
starting with a habit of writing 1000 words a day, this is what you're going to do, you're going to
choose a time of the day where you feel you are at your peak in concentration, where you are most
		

			awake, most alert, most excited to do something. Right everybody this is different. So some people
are early birds, their mind is at its best early in the morning. For those people. I see immediately
after salatu Fajr, and your Quran and whatever other morning, a bother that you do early in the
morning, take an hour to just sit and write. If you start work at 8am, sitting right from 6am to
7am. But if you are an early bird, make sure you are doing your writing early in the morning. Some
people are night owls, the mind is most awake and most creative late at night. For those people I
say 10pm 11pm excellent time to sit and write. Because your ideas are flowing you full of energy,
		

			you are in your peak of concentration.
		

			Just sit and write.
		

			Then you get the third type of person which is where I fall into, which is that my mind is most
awake in the afternoon. i This is I think a bit more rare. Most people are early birds and night
owls. But some of us afternoon people so in the mornings are a bit groggy in the evening, I'm too
tired to do anything. The afternoons when I get things done. So my writing time is 3pm to 4pm.
Because I know that's when I'm at my best, that's when I'm at my peak, that's when I can get the
most done. A lot of people don't think of that they think you're either an early bird or a night
owl. But in reality, there is a third type of person which is the afternoon person. So you need to
		

			take some time to explore. And what you're going to do is you're going to analyze your mind and just
spend a few days thinking about what time of the day, am I most energetic and have the most creative
ideas. And that's the time you'll want to try and fit in your it might not be possible for everyone.
Because if you work in a job, where you have to be at work in the afternoons and you're an afternoon
person, then you're not gonna be able to write at your peak time, unless you do it on the weekend.
Right, but everyone's different. Some people have more flexible work hours, some people you know,
their work hours may not match up with a peak creative time, each of us need to figure out what
		

			works best for us. But if you can find a peak creative time in which you're not preoccupied with
something else, dedicate that time for writing, then this is what you're going to do. Now you're
going to make sure that you have no distractions for that time. Tell your family that 3pm to 4pm is
my writing time, or 10pm to 11pm is my writing time, or 6am to 7am is my writing time, tell your
family that I do not want any disturbances. For this one hour, I am writing
		

			trying to have a dedicated writing space. So I have my home office where I close the door, shut
myself off from the world and sit and write. It works for me. Some of you may work better in a
coffee shop. Some of you may work better in the corner of your room, in your house, wherever it is.
But find a place that works for you a place where you are able to concentrate and focus on your
writing without distractions.
		

			Then you want to make sure you have no distractions on your devices. So put your phone on silent,
put it away. On your computer, make sure there are no social media open, there's no apps open, have
only your writing tools open. If you're writing with pen and paper, have just your book and your and
your pen, if you're writing on your laptop, have just your word processor open and nothing else. And
for the next one, I will just focus on that. Now, you're not going to end up writing for the entire
hour. No, they actually days where I will sit and stare at the screen 45 minutes and write for 15
minutes, because it actually takes me like 10 to 15 minutes to write 1000 words, but you want to
		

			dedicate this time to your writing. Because even the time that you're just sitting and staring at
your screen, you are thinking about what you write about. You are processing your thoughts you are
formulating the idea for your next book or your next article. And that is valuable time. That is an
important part of your work. Writing is not just sitting and typing all the time. You need to be
able to type things that are beneficial and to do that you need time to think
		

			And one of our problems today is that we don't make time to think we are distracted all the time
with social media and entertainment. And we think that we need to be doing something all the time.
Now you need to be able to have time where you just sit and think. And I have over over the years,
because now I'm now a full time writer, I have hours of the day for research, hours of the day for
thinking, and hours of the day for writing. And I put all of this together. And I'm able to, you
know, do much better. But in the beginning, you know, I had to just have one hour of the day, which
would be for everything. As I worked a job and wrote on the site before I got a job as a full time
		

			writer. So this is what you're going to have to do if you want to really be serious about writing,
if you want to get into the flow of writing books, if you want to publish at least 12 books in your
lifetime. You can't just write when you're in the woods, you can't just write when you feel inspired
or motivated. You can't just write it occasionally, it has to be consistent, it has to become a
habit, it has to become something that you are building yourself to get better at every single day.
To do this, you need to write at least 1000 words a day, you need to have a dedicated hour for
writing specifically, our best at a peak performance hour, you need to have a dedicated writing
		

			space, you need to make sure there are no distractions during the writing time. And you need to
force yourself to write no matter how tired you are, no matter how stressed out you are, no matter
how distracted you are, by the tests of life, force yourself to write. So you're going to have those
days where you are so emotionally exhausted, where you are so burned out by life by everything
that's going crazy in your life that you don't want to write.
		

			And yes, sometimes I give myself a break, because sometimes you just say, Okay, I can't do it today.
But other times I found that, on those days, taking the time to sit and write really helps bring
some source of peace to the day. Because if I'm unable to think of anything else, I sit and journal
about what's causing me stress about what caused me trauma, but what the difficulty I had, how to
process it and how to get over it. And those writings, even though nobody else will ever see it was
the most beneficial writings to me.
		

			So even in difficulties, I still highly recommend writing. Take a break from your book and write for
yourself, write to yourself, because these writings are the ones that are going to help you grow as
a person. And they are going to help you develop your thoughts your thoughts further. Remember, as a
writer, the majority of what you write is not going to be seen by the public. You're going to write
things and delete, you're going to write things and put them away, you're going to write things that
are only for yourself. The key is to be writing consistently and daily. And from your writings, to
be able to develop things that are beneficial for others. It may only be 50%, of what you write,
		

			which is the public. But that's fine. If you're writing every single day, that's going to be a lot.
But if you're writing only once a week, and only 50% of that is reaching the public, it's not going
to be much. So just those are my thoughts for today. And I hope you find this beneficial. If you
want to be a writer, get into the habit, get into the flow, make sure you're writing 1000 words a
day, if that's too hot, start to 500 words a day, have dedicated writing time, try to have it at
your peak performance hour, try to make sure there are no distractions during that time, and you
have a dedicated writing space. And if you can't think of anything else to write, just to remind
		

			them, just whatever is clogging up your brain, just write all of that down and explore your thoughts
and all of that. And you will find it to be a very beneficial process for you. Because this will
help to it will be a form of self therapy, right. But also it will help to free up your mind to be
able to think about deeper topics and to develop more topics for writing, what you're going to find
is if you are showing up every day to write, your brain is going to eventually say you know what we
are writing at this time, might as well write something beneficial. And somewhere down the line is
going to spark in your mind. A great idea for a book or article. And when that happens, you enter a
		

			state of flow and you get writing. And within a few weeks or months, you have something beautiful
that's out there. For you. It all starts with developing a habit. So I hope you found this
beneficial. If you did, be sure to like and subscribe and share this video with others and let
people know about the work that we're doing to benefit the Ummah and make dua for me. Make dua for
me to be able to write more books produce more online courses produce more videos, I'm able to
continue helping others with the work that I do and make dua that Allah qifeng sincere and forgive
me for my mistakes and my sins. Jesus for the hate for your time and your attention was salam Wa
		

			alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh