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