Contents

The 8-Minute Writing Habit

Get on the ARC List!
Introduction
Part 1: Bust Through the Author Blocks That
Are Keeping You From Writing
Blocker #1: Writing Might Not Pay Off
Blocker #2: Writing is a Lottery That I'm Unlikely To Win
Blocker #3: I'm Not Good Enough To Be a
Writer
Blocker #4: I'm Distracted By Life/Family/
Work
Blocker #5: I'm Stuck in the Planning/Writing/Editing Phase
Part 2: Nine Strategies the Pros Use To Write
Consistently
Strategy #1: Write For an 8-Minute Timed
Session
Strategy #2: Write In the Morning
Strategy #3: Take Your Writing Mobile

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Strategy #4: Embrace New Input Devices

Strategy #5: Use the Plan C Method
Strategy #6: Use the Method of Descent
Strategy #7: Collaborate With a Fellow
Writer
Strategy #8: Get Your Family Involved
Strategy #9: Set Public Deadlines
Part 3: The 8 x 8 Challenge
Day 1: 8-Minute Sprints
Day 2: 8-Minute Switchup
Day 3: 8-Minute Mobile
Day 4: 8-Minute Morning
Day 5: 8-Minute Increase
Day 6: 8-Minute Accountability
Day 7: 8-Minute Planning
Day 8: 8-Minute Results
Additional Resources
Remember!
About the Author
Copyright

The 8-Minute Writing

Habit
Create a Consistent Writing Habit That
Works With Your Busy Lifestyle

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Introduction
Do you ever wonder what it would really
take to get your project or book done, finally? To not only get your book done, but to
do so amidst all the commitments that
you've already madeyour full-time job,
your spouse, your children, your friends and
family, your continuing education, and all
the other commitments you've made to your
church or community?
My name is Monica Leonelle, and when
I published my first book on writing productivity, Write Better, Faster, I didn't expect it to be so popular among people who
hadn't yet published books. Because I am a
full-time author, I figured it would be more
helpful to other authors who already had a
solid system for writing, but were just looking to tweak their processes and find optimizations that would help them write faster
than they currently were.

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What I found, however, is that the

people who needed the book most were
struggling writers. They were people who
had full-time jobs but lots of side projects,
people who had families but a small bit of
free time, and people who had big dreams to
publish either their first book or series in the
next year.
Most of my readers were at the beginning of their writing journeys, where they
were trying to figure out how to sit down and
write a book. For some of those readers,
Write Better, Faster helped things "click" for
them. I started hearing stories from hundreds of people who had unlocked their writing potential using Write Better, Faster:
"Even though I'd been aware of how beats work, I
didn't fully get it until this book, and then went on to
churn out a novel in 5 weeks instead of my usual 12 18 months."
~ Sable Jordan, author of the Kizzie Baldwin thriller
series

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"Even with these hacks and as a pantser (a seat-ofthe-pants writer who uses only a minimal outline)I'm hitting 2400 words per hour. I've written
over 20K words in about eight days, and that with a
day or two off."
~ Numinous Dreamer, an Amazon reviewer
"I've already begun putting some of these ideas into
practice, and with very little effort have raised my
writing speed dramatically... After a little trial-and-error I'm already averaging at 1,500 words per
hourwhich is a lot faster than before!"
~ Edison T. Crux, author of The Enoc Tales series
"Some great tips from Monica, and every writer, no
matter where on the journey, can learn something
new."
~ Joanna Penn, NYT and USA Today bestselling author of thriller under J.F. Penn, author of How To
Market a Book and founder of TheCreativePenn.com

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"One of the best how-to-be-a-writer books I've read in

the last year. Worth 10 times the price."
~ Kevin Kruse, NY Times bestselling author, Forbes
columnist and serial entrepreneur
"Record today: 538 words, 8 min. Thanks Monica,
you've really inspired me to write more better faster."
~ Honore Corder, Executive coach and bestselling
author of Prosperity For Writers, Vision to Reality
and the Successful Single Mom series
"Although I'm nowhere near 4000 words an hour, I
do see a tangible improvement. Pomodoros, in particular, have worked very well for me, as I'm the kind of
person who gets easily distracted."
~ G. M. Giudicelli, author of Le premier homme sur
Mars sera une blonde
"The information about the Pomodoro Method alone
helped me to triple my writing speed."
~ M. Barstow, Amazon reviewer

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"Just did 20 mins of writing new fiction words. 2613

word count in 20 mins! Yup, saw that right."
~ Winter Bayne, author of the Hawkhurst Saga
"I felt like I was reading a book I wrotewithout having to do all the workReading the journal section
was like reading thoughts that I have on a daily basis
and I found it helpful that she did all the legwork in
self-discovery."
~ Plume33, Amazon reviewer
"I've always avoided spreadsheets for tracking my
work, but I started doing it after reading this and it
helped tremendously."
~ Michael La Ronn, author of the Android X series
"Since I've started reading this book, I was able to
triple my weekly word count."
~ Julia Mayer, author of the Old Souls series

Despite all this amazing feedback and

these fantastic testimonials for how the

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Write Better, Faster framework could truly

work for others, I also started hearing feedback from people who loved the book but
weren't necessarily seeing a ton of progress
in their current writing habits.
Hold up! For those of you who don't
know me very well yet, I'll be honestI'm
not the type of person who gives up easily
when I set my mind to something. When I
wrote Write Better, Faster, I wanted to show
people that writing didn't have to be hard,
time-consuming, painful, or something you
do only once in awhile.
That's why it KILLED me to see people
who had so much potential but who were
still struggling to create a consistent writing
habit, even after reading Write Better,
Faster.
So, I surveyed past readers of the book
to get to the bottom of this and uncover what
gaps I had left in my original book that could
be addressed going forward. I was flooded

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with some surprising insights that I didn't

expect.
Do you see yourself in any of the
following?
"I have a hard time keeping myself writing daily.
There are times when I think to myself, 'Would I be
better off getting a second job?'"
"What if I write what I'm passionate about and it
doesn't sell?"
"Not sure I should allow myself to expel the effort in a
potentially high risk/low return field."
"I'm stuck in a place where I'm just not sure what the
next steps are to building my career, so I will just keep
creating more work and hoping that sooner or later
something gives."
"I keep trying to find ways to make money, because I
don't have the confidence I can make a living off my

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books. When I sit down and tell myself to just write,

my anxiety level goes through the roof."
"I don't think I'm particularly good at doing more
than one thing. For example, I can write or I can market, but doing one drains me of the will to do the
other."
"How do I get buy-in from my family?"
"Actually sitting down and doing the work is my
biggest obstacle."
"I don't have a clear workspace of my own it can be
hard to stop others from (unintentionally) interrupting me."
"The big hurdle, I think, is keeping myself focused."
"My day job sucks up my creativity and energy."
"My struggle is limited time (I have a full-time day
job) and limited energy."

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"I work full time, I get very tired. I know if I prioritise

it, I can find time, but it's hard to keep track. Work
drains my creativity too."
"I have a full-time job and take care of 2 awesome
kidsleaving me with little time and energy to write
what I want to write."
"Need to hack my way out of my current schedule
somehow will maintaining my commitments to my
priorities (job, family)"
"I have a day job and I fell that it's taking most of my
time and energy. So usually, when I get home at night,
I can't write anymore."
"Fighting my Internal Perfectionist. It's hard for me to
see where there really *is* a problem, and where it's
just my Inner P being critical."
"I am totally stuck and in my head."
"I'm stuck in research mode."

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"I need to focus better on the writing at hand. As it is,

I have been spending writing time for research."
"I'm not confident in my planning process."
"I'm blocked on rewrites!"
"My first draft is a holy mess & facing it in all its ugliness feels overwhelming."

I realized quickly that my first book had

made a terribly incorrect assumption. I assumed that most people who wanted to write
were looking for how to get it done faster.
When in fact, in looking at the feedback, it
became clear that many people were struggling to write at all or consistently.
That's when I decided to write a brand
new book aimed at busy people who needed
help integrating writing itselfnot necessarily fast writing, not even necessarily better

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writinginto their daily, already-burstingat-the-seams lifestyles.

The 8-Minute Writing Habit doesn't necessarily have completely new insights and
ideas, though I guarantee the words themselves are fresh and have never been published elsewhere.
This book is all about integrating the
very best ideas from Write Better, Faster into your daily lifeeven if you have a day job,
even if you have a family, even if you're a full
time student, and even if you don't have a
ton of time to spend on tracking and experimenting with your writing habits.
There are three steps involved:
First, we're going to break down all the
blocks that are holding you back from sitting
down and writing more often. This is
something I didn't spend nearly enough time
discussing in the first book I wrote, but when
I looked at the feedback I received, it was

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clear that so many writers had Author Blocks

that were holding them back.
I remember two years ago when I myself
was struggling with this and had that perseverant internal drama of, "I desperately
want to write this but I'm not writing it. Why
am I not writing it? Why am I procrastinating/lazy/not working hard enough/not doing
what I know I need to do?"
If you are stuck in this cycle of self-talk,
don't skip past the first part of this book.
We'll be doing some important work to reengineer your mindset about sitting down and
writing, so you can do it more often, with less
internal drama.
Next, I'm going to give you the nine
best strategies that professional authors are
using to get their writing done each and
every day. These strategies are taken directly
from studying the habits of authors who do
this full-time and documenting their patterns. Each of these strategies alone could

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give you a boost in word count per week or

month, but when you start stacking them on
top of each other, you'll find yourself making
massive progress toward your writing goals.
If you've ever wondered how the authors
who eat continue to produce book after
bookespecially if you are still struggling to
get your first book or series donethis is the
section that reveals all their best secrets and
tricks.
And if you've ever thought these people
are superhuman, I'm going to do my best to
convince you that they are 100% ordinary,
just like youand that you can get the exact
same or better results than they are with just
a few simple changes.
Finally, I'm going to give you a super
simple plan to start writing faster and more
consistentlyeven if you have a million other things going on in your life. The 8x8 Challenge only requires your commitment for
eight days, eight minutes per day, to see

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results! If you are interested in building your

muscle for writing daily, you'll love how easy
this challenge is to start, continue, and
finish.
What this book does not contain: my full
backstory and how I got into writing productivity in the first place. If you want to
learn a ton of background on how I came to
these conclusions and where I learned
everything I know about writing productivity, plus learn how I increased my writing
speed dramatically over just a few short
months, you can read about my entire 2013
journey in Write Better, Faster.
However, if you haven't yet had the
chance to pick up Write Better, Faster, you
can still use The 8-Minute Writing Habit to
start a consistent writing routine that will
help propel you into a new phase of your creative life. The 8-Minute Writing Habit is
meant to give you all the goods with no fluff.
This book is for people who need a cheat

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sheetpeople who are looking for the top

major changes they can make in their writing
habits (or non-habits) to get results right
noweven with all the other things they
have going on in their lives.
Ready to get started?

Part 1: Bust Through the

Author Blocks That Are
Keeping You From Writing
I used to think that "butt-in-chair" was the
answer to writing more words on a consistent basis.
I even (stupidly) repeated this phrase on
podcasts, in books, in blog posts and more as
sage advice for new or upcoming writers.
Now, however, "butt-in-chair" is one of
my banished phrases when talking to people
struggling with their writing habits. Oooh, I
bristle at this phrase these days. Like, shut
up, right? And also, if writing was as easy as
"butt-in-chair," everyone would be a writer!
Why this 180-degree turnaround, you
might wonder? I like to think it's because I've
matured in my understanding of writing productivity over the years. I know from:

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Five years of pain and struggle with

the
"butt-in-chair"
myth
and
everything that came with it (the inadequacy, the procrastination, the
self-loathing, and most importantly,
the lack of writing progress)
One year of learning to solve my writing habit for good (not necessarily
with my butt in a chair the whole
time)
Two years of hearing hundreds of
writers' personal stories about what
worked for them
that this is officially the worst advice
ever unleashed on poor, unsuspecting
hoping-to-be writers.
Ever.
Here's why.
Imagine you are trying to navigate a
minefield. You have two choices:

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Scenario A: You start walking a path

that seems good and hope you don't step on
a mine.
Scenario B: You take a few extra days to
identify the mines and avoid them or remove
them from your path. Then you walk across
the field.
Which did you choose?
Now, imagine you are navigating your
fears, questions, negative self-talk, limiting
beliefs, and blockers toward sitting down to
write. You have two choices:
Scenario A: You put "butt-in-chair" to
write and hope you don't get stuck.
Scenario B: You take a few extra days to
identify these fears, questions, negative selftalk, limiting beliefs, or blockers and avoid
them or remove them from your mindset.
Then you sit down and write.
I have personally tried both Scenario A
and Scenario B. In Scenario A, I spent 5
years (2009-2013) writing and releasing one

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book every year. In Scenario B, I released 8

books and one short story the first year
(2014), and now I'm on track to release 22
books by the end of 2015.
The difference wasn't "butt-in-chair." I
can assure you I spent a lot of time sitting in
front of a computer from 2009-2013, trying
to type All of the Things.
The real difference is that right before I
entered 2014, I spent time getting to the root
of my issues toward writing, which had nothing to do with lack of time, lack of effort, or
lack of desire. Many of them were rooted in
my emotional state, my fears, my anxietywhich was why implementing the
strategy ("butt-in-chair") didn't work!
Have you ever noticed that two people
can implement the same information and see
wildly different results? A great example of
this is maintaining a healthy body weight.
Everyone knows the secretburn more calories than you consume. Yet you probably

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know some people who use that information

to stay at their high school weight, other
people who know that information but continue to balloon up through the years, and
lots of people in the middle of the two
extremes.
The difference, again, is uprooting the
deeper cause of the problem. With physique,
we might call this "emotional eating" or
something similar.
Yet, writers don't have a phrase for this
same phenomenon. Perhaps "emotional procrastination" describes it best?
Before I ran my 2-month experiment to
establish a consistent writing habit in 2013, I
couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.
I hadn't yet uncovered my emotional procrastination triggers. I hadn't yet identified
and cleared many of the blocks (I call them
Author Blocks) that were actually holding
me back from implementing the best writing
productivity tips with success.

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If you have ever experienced that feeling

of being "stuck" with writing, it is not because you haven't put your butt in a chair.
It's because you are suffering from emotional
procrastination toward writing.
The cure is to clear the Author Blocks
that are blocking your path to a consistent
writing habit. You need to clear them before
you can navigate the minefield of showing up
to your writing sessions every day.
We are eventually going to get to the
meat of this bookthose nine killer
strategies that are going to help you rock
your writing habit every day. But before we
do that, we really need to remove all the
obstacles that might be holding you back.
This section is going to help you clear your
Author Blocks toward writing.
And hopefully when we are done, we'll
never have to talk about your butt again.
Fair warning: throughout this section,
we may be digging deep into some tough or

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touchy issues. If something is resonating

deeply with you, it's a good place to start exploring for root causes. If it helps, you can
keep a journal or notepad of the blockers you
think you might have so you can start to address and clear them.

Blocker #1: Writing Might

Not Pay Off
One of the most painful Author Blocks to get
past is uncertainty, or the question of whether writing is ever going to pay off for you.
You can spin over this question for days,
months, years. You may find yourself asking
more than once why writing is a priority for
you in the first place.
Should you be investing your time and
energy into writing, or is there something
more productive you could be doing? What if
you sink all this money into producing your
book and it never pays off? What if you work
hard on your masterpiece and no one reads
it?
You can tell if you have this block because you are focused heavily on the outcome or what you can gain from the work,
rather than the joy of doing the work. This is
an issue of control, and like many things in

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life, we don't always have control over our

book's reception, sales, or trajectory. So
when you start spinning on this question and
realize you don't have control over the outcome, you find reasons to procrastinate on
your writing goals.
The cure for this Author Block is a
4-step process:

Step #1: Decouple the work from

the outcome
You probably have several outcomes you
hope to gain from writing. Here are some of
the the most popular ones:
"I want to quit my job and become a
full-time author"
"I want to become a bestseller"
"I want to make a lot of money"
"I want to have a flexible schedule so
I have more time with my friends and
family"

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"I want to have my dream job making

money from my passion"
"I want people to read my ideas"
"I want critical praise"
"I want to leave a legacy"
All of these outcomes are lovely, noble
goals to pursue. You shouldn't feel bad or
guilty for wanting them to manifest.
However, none of these outcomes are guaranteed. Even if you do manifest them, it's
unlikely that any will happen right away in
your author career.
Sometimes,
outcomes
represent
something we're struggling with in our current lives. For example, if you want to become a full-time author, it could be that you
really just hate going into your office every
day. If you want people to read your ideas, it
could be that you feel unheard or unnoticed
in your personal life or at work. Check in
with yourself and dig into the "why" of the
outcome you are seeking.

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You may also find that you see writing

as a solution to a major problem in your life.
For example, if you have a ton of debt, you
may be looking for another stream of income. If you want to leave a legacy, you may
be worried about your health, or you may
have a fear of death. Once you identify the
root of your problem, you'll see that the issue
has nothing to do with writing at all, but
rather a different area of your life.
As you consider the source of "why" you
want this specific outcome, ask yourself if
writing is the only way to get the result.
If you hate your job, can you change
jobs, change your attitude toward
your job, or quit your job and do
something else?
If you want bestseller recognition to
prove to your family that you're
worthwhile, can you get a promotion
at work instead?

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If you need money, can you find a

full-time or contract job that pays
now?
If you want to get your message into
the world, can you start a blog or a
vlog and let them read it for free?
If you need a flexible schedule, can
you talk to your boss about your
hours or negotiate remote work?
Once you see that writing is not the only
solution to that thing that has you hating life
right now, you may find less attachment to
that outcome you were hoping for.
When you take away the expectation of
outcome, or worse, the need for a certain
outcome to happen ("if this book doesn't sell
I can't make rent") you'll find that the writing comes much easier.
Finally, there are some challenges that
are going to threaten your writing habit, that
you should address first. For example:

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You can't write consistently if you

aren't eating, sleeping, and paying all
of your bills. Solve your cash flow
problem first, then come back to
writing.
You can't write consistently if you are
using the praise of your writing to fill
a gap in your self-esteem. That's going to leave you on a roller coaster of
elation and depression, which isn't
healthy in the slightest.
You can't write consistently if you
aren't physically healthy. Your diet,
your stress management, and your
movement routines all play a huge
factor in your energy levels. No energy, no writing!
These are just three examples of poor
habits that will kill your writing habit before
it starts. Check in with yourself to see if you
have a habit that is a major blocker to your
writing habit, and address that first.

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Step #2: Reevaluate your goal

Once you decouple the outcome from the
work and strip your expectations away, you
can see whether you truly want to write this
book or not. Assuming you never make a
profit, never reach the bestseller lists, and
never get a 5-star review, does this book still
matter to you?
Don't feel bad if the answer is no. I remember a goal I had for years, to learn to
play guitar. I loved the idea of being able to
sing and play my own instrumental at house
partiesjust pick up a guitar and start! I
would be the life of the party.
But when I stripped away that outcome,
I realized that I didn't enjoy playing the guitar at all. It's been collecting dust next to my
nightstand for the last 10 years as a reminder
that sometimes it's okay to drop a goal or
hobby that isn't right for you.

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Step #3: Reignite what made you

passionate about writing in the
first place
You likely wanted to be a writer because you
had a story to tell or a message to share.
Writing was a natural medium for you to express yourself. In order to start writing
again, you need to tap into whatever inspired
you to come up with your story or idea to begin with.
There are dozens of ways to do this.
Here are a few:
Touch base with a colleague, coworker, or client who inspired your original ideas
Start talking about your fiction story
to everyone you know
Send a first chapter of your book to
an author friend

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Join a critique or accountability writing group to stay motivated (in-person or online, either works)
Write down your notes for your idea
or story (in outline form or another
structure, like a mind map or
timeline)
Pick up some books similar to the
one you want to write and go on a
reading binge
If you've already written one book in
the series, reread it
Attend a writer's conference, a book
signing, or even just take a visit to the
library or a bookstore
Give a speech, make a video, or write
a blog post on your topic
When you re-inspire yourself, you activate your inner "why." This is an incredibly
powerful motivator that should at least get
you started. From there, the strategies I'll

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share in Part 2 should fall into place easily

and keep you going.

Step #4: Experiment freely with

no expectations
Usually when we learn new things we expect
to be bad at them for awhile. For example, if
you have never kicked a soccer ball before,
you probably wouldn't expect to walk onto
Manchester United's turf and kick it halfway
across the field, right between the goalposts.
Yet, for some reason writers approach
an author career as if their first book launch
is going to land them movie deals and make
them rich.
If you approach your author career as
one big, fun experiment, however, then you
will never have to question whether it will
pay off again. Experiments always have a
payoff because they help you learn and grow.
They also help you detach from outcome because every outcome is acceptable. You are

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merely collecting data on what works and

what doesn't, so every outcome meets your
goal.
I've fallen flat on my face dozens of
times during my indie career, and it hasn't
killed my opportunities or my sales yet. I've
launched books that have gotten terrible reviews, I've sent annoying emails, I've set release dates that I couldn't hit, I've said the
wrong thing on blogs and podcasts. Anything
worth doing in life is going to have opportunities to fail. Think of every move you make in
your author career as an experiment and embrace any failures or setbacks you might
come up against.

Blocker #2: Writing is a

Lottery That I'm Unlikely
To Win
The myth of the starving artist has been perpetuated among your circle of friends for
decades. When you tell people about your
dream of writing a book, they urge you to be
"realistic" and follow a traditional or proper
path in life. You feel like you simply aren't
lucky enough to make writing your full-time
career. Sound familiar?
You know you have this Author Block
because you look at a writing career as having a low return on investment. You see the
"lucky ones" who are making a full-time living at it and assume they've won the golden
ticket. You may be obsessed with negative
publishing industry statistics, like the fact
that the average book sells fewer than 500
copies. Whatever the hangup, it leads you to
believe that an author career is not

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something you can achieve through hard

work, persistence, marketing, and good business sense.
The cure for this Author Block is a
3-step process:

Step #1: Surround yourself with

successful authors
When I first went down this path of becoming a full-time writer, there were people in
my life who seemed to think that being a
prosperous creative was like winning the lottery. It just didn't happen to "people like us."
If this is something that you believe as
well, or if it's something that you're hearing
from the people around you, you need to get
a new "us." Among the people I spend most
of my time with now, there are a ton of supposed lottery winners. In fact, almost all of
us are working on our writing businesses
full-time and also paying all of our bills.

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Somehow, we all chose the lucky numbers, I

guess!
The best way to overturn this limiting
belief is to start surrounding yourself with
people who know that this is not a lottery
game. You can start by reading my books
and
my
weekly
column
over
at
ProseOnFire.com. This alone will help you
get into the mindset of someone who is
working on her dreams full-timeand when
you dig into my messy business, you'll see
that I'm truly no different than you. I
struggled with many of the same issues you
are probably struggling with now, and I was
able to overcome them.
I am not the only one, either. There are
hundreds of authors who write books, post
blogs, and record podcasts about their successes and struggles as authors. I personally
love podcasts where the authors go behindthe-scenes of their business, or dig into other

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authors' businesses through interviews. A

few you can start with:
The Self-Publishing Podcast by Sterling and Stone
The Creative Penn Podcast by Joanna
Penn
The Author Biz by Stephen Campbell
The Write Impact by Glenn Leibowitz
You should, of course, seek out your
own preferred stories, both successes and
struggles. Both are important!
When you surround yourself with these
stories, you'll find that luck plays a very
small factor in your overall trajectory as a
writer. The more important attributes of a
successful writer are:
Building systems and processes
Working harder than the wannabes

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Being strategic in your decisions

Experimenting, tweaking, and optimizing every aspect of your business
Persisting for years, if needed
Yes, there is always some element of
luck to anythingwhich means it took a bit
of luck to do whatever you've been doing for
most of your adult life. If you look at where
you're at now, you would probably agree
with the quote by Seneca, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
Writing and becoming an author is no
different. Assume the little bit of luck you
need is on your side and develop your skills
in the factors that truly matter.

Step #2: Learn the playbook and

see the path
The path to becoming a full-time author with
actual money coming in is as well-tread as
any other modern-day profession. If you

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wanted to be a doctor, you would understand

that you have to get an undergraduate degree, preferably in the sciences, then you'd
have to take the MCAT, then you'd have to
apply to medical schools, then you'd have to
land a residency, and so on.
The path doesn't look easy, but it's certainly straightforward. And the same is true
of being a full-time author, only for some
reason the path in our profession isn't shared
or taught in schools.
It's impossible to believe in your career
path if you can't see all the pieces you need to
eventually have in place. But once you see
the path to getting more books out and growing your audience, you'll find that it's just as
straightforward as any other career plan you
might create. Not easy, but straightforward.
How do you learn this secret playbook?
Just like any other profession, you find
mentors in your field and study their paths.
You ask lots of questions. And don't stress

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over not knowing any authors personally.

You can find hundreds of mentors and take
up none of their time simply by reading
books. Books written by smart people are my
absolute favorite mentors because I can learn
so much with such a small investment of
both my time and money. Another good
source for newer writers is to start listening
to podcastsjust search iTunes and you'll
find dozens just on publishing, writing, and
authorship.

Step #3: Look at the very next step

only
The steps to succeed as an author or even to
get a single book out are overwhelming. You
have to plan the book. You have to write the
book. You have to edit the book. You have to
package the book. You have to publish the
book. You have to distribute the book. You
have to market the book. You have to sell the
book. You have to set up the business that

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manages the book. Each of these steps involves a cross-set of skills that you either
have to outsource or learn yourself. It's
enough to give anyone major anxiety that is
going to stop you dead in your tracks when
you sit down to write.
But here's the thingyou don't need to
worry about marketing your product until
you actually have a product to market. You
don't need to worry about setting up your
business properly until you have several
titles earning a tidy income. You don't need
to worry about editing until the first draft is
done.
You may be able to see the big picture
and have a grand plan with the help of your
mentors, but the next step is still right in
front of you. Once you've researched the big
picture enough and have figured out a reasonable sequence of tasks to do in a reasonable order, it's time to break that plan down

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into actions. Figure out the very next step

and ignore everything else. Do that next step.
It helps to stop filling your head with
crap that can't help you do that next step.
That means don't listen to indie marketing
podcasts if you don't have a book yet. Don't
worry about writing your draft until you have
a solid outline. Don't look for an editor until
your draft is done. Don't set up your website
until you know your book's release date.
And on, and on, and on.
Thinking that writing is a lottery is an
easy way to wash away the details, or even to
let yourself off the hook of following this
dream. But believing it's achievable for you
can help you actually take actionstarting
with a consistent writing habit.

Blocker #3: I'm Not Good

Enough To Be a Writer
Who, exactly, are you to have this goal of
writing books? You may have asked yourself
this question in the past, but the real question is, why wouldn't you have this goal?
You know you have this Author Block if
you feel a persistent self-doubt over your
abilities to pursue writing as a hobby or a
career.
The cure for this Author Block is a
3-step process:

Step #1: Make a list of your past

successes
Consider your current career. Remind yourself of everything it took you to get to where
you areyears of education, years of climbing the ladder, tons of new skill sets learned
over time, and more.

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If you aren't a careerist, consider the

area of your life that you devote most of your
time to. For example, if you're a parent, consider how much effort you've put into caring
for your children over the years. If you've
been playing chess since high school, consider how many tournaments you had to
compete in to get to the level you're at.
You've likely already had incredibly difficult goals in the past, and you always found
ways to reach them. This goal is no different,
and with the right mentorship and community, you can find the answers to any
questions or challenges you could possibly
have while pursuing this goal.
You are worthy of becoming a full-time
writer and you're perfectly capable of living
this dream. You've done similar stuff like this
before. I'm not saying it's going to be easy.
But if you're willing to give yourself the time
and space, and if you're willing to invest your
energy and maybe some of your resources

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into the dream, you will be able to do it. It's

really just a matter of time. You've got this.

Step #2: Invest time and energy

into your skill set
The best way to improve your confidence at
anything is to improve your skill at it. So you
don't feel like a great writer? Grab every
writing book you can get your hands on and
start studying. Practice, practice, practice.
Exchange your work with other authors for
critique, enlist beta readers who will give you
valuable feedback, post your work on a blog
and send the links out to everyone you know.
When you work on your skill set and see
measurable improvement against your past
self, you know your ability. Working like a
dog at something is a huge confidence booster. Know your craft and you will start to see
external confirmation of what you already
knowyou are an awesome writer with
worthy things to say!

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Step #3: Focus on adding value to

others
Once you are confident in your skill set, the
final step is to look for ways to add value to
others.
It doesn't have to be hard. Write a short
story that everybody loves, teach a skill that
can help someone get a job, and in general
try to improve people's lives.
Even as a fiction author you can make a
big difference to someone. For example, I
have this silly Revenge-esque romance series
and, to be honest, I thought for sure there
was nothing noble about writing this story
down. Yet, I recently received an email from
a cancer patient who said the books helped
her get through her chemo treatment and
that she's desperate for the last three in the
series! This meant the world to me and kept
me motivated to finish the series as soon as
possible, because there is nothing that adds

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value like touching someone's life when

they're in need of your support.
You can and will make a difference in
people's lives when you put your work out
there. This will give you external confirmation that what you write contributes to this
world in a positive way. It's hard to argue
with that kind of evidence!

Blocker #4: I'm Distracted

By Life/Family/Work
You likely have categories of your life that
are very important to youfamily, friends,
work, and more. If any of these important
areas of your life went up against writing in a
boxing match, who would win?
The answer is no one. If you found yourself choosing one category over the other, it's
no surprise that writing falls to the wayside
in the face of your other priorities. Writing
should never be in a boxing match against
these other areas in the first place.
You know you have this Author Block if
you feel like you have to choose between
something important to you and writing. For
example, if you have to choose between
spending time with your spouse and writing,
or if you have to choose between working
late and writing.

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The cure is to get buy-in from your most

important people.
Right now, you are probably pitting your
writing goals against all the other important
things in your life, and writing is losing every
time. The trick is to stop pitting them against
each other. That's a recipe for failure and will
cause resentment to build not only for you,
but also for the people you love.
If you want a consistent writing habit,
you have to integrate writing into your life. It
needs to flow along with the natural state of
the rest of your life. Your spouse needs to be
on board, your kids need to be on board, and
your boss and coworkers need to be on
board.
Getting buy-in from your favorite people
is easier than it sounds:

Step #1: Share your larger vision

with the people who need to know

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You may want to spend more time writing

because it's always been your dream. You
may need to do it because you want to leave
a legacy. You may need to do it because you
see this as a full-time career opportunity
someday. The people who are going to be affected by your decisions need to understand
your "why" behind writing before they can
fully support you.
For example, when I was trying to get
my boyfriend on board as I pursued a fulltime fiction career, I talked to him a lot
about how I felt I needed to opt out of the
workforce. Before I started writing I was
working from 9 to 7 every weekday and I often had to be online later in the evenings to
chat with my boss or handle something time
sensitive. On the weekends, I often had
plenty of work obligations that took up my
time, even if they were meant to be social or
to build bonding with the team.

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I told Patrick that my long-term vision

was to build a business that I could scale
back when needed, so that I would have time
and attention to give to our future potential
children. I also talked a lot about the income
ceiling that I had already hit in my career. I
was making six figures at age 27, and I knew
that the next level was going to take up a
huge amount of energy and commitment
that I wasn't willing to give to a company
that was not my own.

Step #2: Ask for what you need

If you need 20 minutes to write every day,
perhaps you can ask your spouse to keep the
kids occupied during that time. Or, maybe
you can write before the family wakes up or
after the family goes to sleep. You may need
to talk to your boss about leaving work on
time, or you may need tell your coworkers
you can't do lunch with them because you
need that time to write.

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Sometimes, you need to negotiate a

trade-off. You could make a deal with your
spouse that he or she entertains the kids for
20 minutes every night and you in return entertain the kids for a different 20 minutes so
your spouse can have a break.
In my negotiation, I asked my boyfriend
to pay more on the apartment because he
made a lot more than me, in exchange for me
doing most of the cleaning and cooking. I
also told him that I needed to work nights
and weekends because I was trying to build a
business before we had a family. He
struggled with these needs at first because
they weren't what he envisioned for us, but
we eventually worked it out by talking it
through.

Step #3: Honor your commitments to your important people

and keep them updated on your
progress

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It's natural for spouses, parents, friends, and

bosses to be skeptical about your big dream.
They don't have all the details, they haven't
read all the success stories, and they don't
live and breathe this world. But the best way
to reinforce their support is to do what you
say you're going to do and report back. If you
asked your spouse to watch the kids so you
can write, report back that you hit 500 words
on your manuscript. If you asked your
coworkers to go to lunch without you, let
them know that you had a productive lunch.
This last step is extremely important.
My boyfriend didn't really believe this path
was possible for me until he saw that I was
going to follow through on everything that I
was selling him on. When he saw that I was
making $500 a month on Amazon, he started paying more attention and giving my
dreams more credibility. I would say to him
things like, "if I'm making $500 now, when I
write more books I could be making $1000,

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or $2000." It was only when he was able to

see the entire path laid out, and see that I
had taken substantial steps down that path
already, that he realized that this was truly a
viable option.

Blocker #5: I'm Stuck in

the Planning/Writing/Editing Phase
Do you find yourself sitting down to write,
but nothing comes out? Do you ever try to
wrangle your notes or your manuscript into
something that's publishable, but you don't
know where to start? Do you have trouble
knowing when you're done with one phase of
writingfor example, when you're done with
edits?
You can tell that this is an Author Block
for you if you feel it within your body. It feels
like butterflies in your stomach, a tug in your
chest, a weight on your shoulders every time
you sit down to write. The fear is there because you know what you want to do, but
you're struggling with how to do it. That
makes you wonder why you bothered to sit
down in the first place!

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The cure is to create a system for processing your workload. For example, when
you open your email inbox, you probably
don't flail around, not knowing what to do.
You probably have a system of rules for processing email, like:
Scan all messages from top to bottom
If I don't need to read the message,
archive it automatically
If I need to respond to the message,
add a star for later
If the information is just FYI, read
immediately then archive
If the message has an important file
attachment, download the file to the
proper folder
And so on
Even though creating a book is a much
more complicated project than checking
email, you can apply the same high-level

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principles to it and develop a process for

completing the work needed.

Step #1: Always have a document

you're working on
You may be thinking, "Rightisn't that just
the draft of my book?"
In my opinion, it is much easier to write
a book when you create a larger paper trail of
your process. Although this seems like more
work in the short term, it actually helps you
finish your book faster because you can
break down your process into manageable
steps.
For example, when I produce an outline,
I often start by just writing down one or two
sentences for each of my scenes by hand.
Next, I move that to Scrivener, where I
can type my outline notes into the Corkboard
view, one set of scenes per notecard.

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Then, I go to each individual chapter

and write my beats in the Document view. I
copy this into the Notes section.
Next, I sketch out each beat and delete
the beat as I go. This helps me visualize how
much I have left. When all the beats are
done, I have a rough scene.
Finally, I add transitions to that same
document. And there's my rough draft!
During the editing phase, I switch documents again. I'll often print out a copy and
go through it by hand, with a pen. I also
compile copies for my Kindle so I can experience the book as a reader will. Each of these
different documents helps me view my story
through a fresh lens.
You don't need to follow this same process at all, but it is helpful to have a process
like this that lets you complete a document
and move forward. Different phases of your
project will require different types of
documents.

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Step #2: Give your phase an

endpoint
You should never be asking yourself the
question, "How do I know I'm done with
this?" Once you've defined the phases of your
project, you should give each phase a clear
and definitive endpoint so that anyone could
tell that this phase is done. Here are my endpoints at the moment, as an example:
Outline - I have written at least two
sentences about each chapter
Beats - I have written out five paragraphs about what happens in that
chapter
Sketches - Every scene in my chapter
is fleshed out
Draft - All the transitions between
scenes are there; there are no halffinished
sentences
and
the
manuscript makes sense

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Revisions - There are no errors from

dictation or misspelled words
Editing - I have gone through my
editing checklist of things to watch
for in every chapter
Proofing - I have compiled the book
for my Kindle and read it through
there, highlighting any issues. I have
corrected those issues in the original
Scrivener file
Publishing - The book is available in
ebook format on Amazon, iTunes,
Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Google
Play, and Smashwords
The endpoint itself doesn't matter because the systems and processes you use to
produce books will evolve over time. For example, eventually my Publishing endpoint
will include the print book being available
through Lightning Source and Createspace.
I strongly believe that having a crappy
system is better than having no system at all.

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You must start somewhere, and it usually

won't be with your fully-realized, perfect vision of how things should be done. As long as
you have a system, you can start making
changes and improving it over time and as
you learn new things and add new skill sets
to your arsenal.

Step #3: Practice getting feedback

on your work
If you still feel anxiety despite the new system you've put in place for processing your
workload, it's most likely due to fear of feedback on your manuscript. You may be frozen
while putting words on the page because
your mind is over-thinking all the ways that
others are going to crap all over your work.
This has held me back during all phases of
the writing processplanning, drafting, editing, and publishingand it's completely
normal.

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The thing that has helped me most is to

seek small amounts of feedback on my work
throughout the process. This could be a critique partner you trust, a close friend who
reads your genre, your small team of beta
readers, or the smart editor you hired.
Dig into your current process and look
for opportunities to ask for feedback. For example, after I finish my first draft, I sometimes send it to an author friend of mine for
feedback. After I get a book published on
pre-order, I usually send it to a team of beta
readers who catch little errors or inconsistencies before the book officially goes out into
the world.
As I got used to receiving both positive
and negative feedback, it prepared me for the
inevitable starred reviews from strangers on
sites like Goodreads and Amazon. I don't always like or understand what I read, but I
don't let it influence me anymore because I

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understand more about how people form

their opinions.

Part 2: Nine Strategies the

Pros
Use
To
Write
Consistently
In Write Better, Faster, I share all my best
tips for absolutely killing your writing
routine every day for the rest of your life. I
use these tested strategies on myself and
have now shared them with hundreds of authors who have seen awesome results. My
four-step framework for discovering which of
these strategies will work for you is, in my
opinion, second to none at helping you experiment with your writing routine. When
you implement that framework, you can
truly triple your writing speeda skill that
will serve you well for the rest of your life.
But this book assumes that you don't
have time to do all that experimentation, at
least not at the moment. After all, I spent
nearly two months trying to find my own

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patterns and routines, and I'm still constantly tweaking as a full-time author.
Furthermore, I'm often changing up my
routine based on the specific project I'm
working on or a variety of other factors that
can make a big difference in how fast I write.
For example, I write non-fiction books much
differently than I write fiction books. That
again requires a level of experimentation and
tracking that many busy people don't have
time for.
In this section, I've condensed my own
experiences and those of dozens of other authors, most of whom are either entrepreneurs, freelancers, or full-time authors, to give
you the nine best tips that authors are using
right now to improve their writing habits.
Most of these authors are at an intermediate or advanced level and are making
money off of their books. However, that
doesn't mean you can't learn and implement
some of their fantastic strategies for getting

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results. Many of these writers also have children, bills, a second business they're running, or health issues that could be distracting them from their goals. Still, these writers
are being professional and producing their
consistent word counts, no matter how they
feel each day or what else is going on in their
lives.
As you go through a section, you might
find that not all of these strategies apply to
you or work for you. Again, if you want to
create a plan that is customized to your own
personal needs and desires, I recommend
that you check out Write Better, Faster to
see how experimentation and tracking can
help you quickly advance and see huge
results.
But if you're just trying to get a few extra
tips that are going to help you implement a
new writing habit starting right now, then
this cheat sheet of nine different strategies

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that professional authors are using is going

to get you off to a great start.
As you work your way through the section, I encourage you to select one strategy at
a time and implement it right away. If you're
feeling any emotional procrastination over
which strategy to select, just go in the order
they are listed in the book and try to implement each one in turn.
Ready to dig in?

Strategy #1: Write For an

8-Minute Timed Session
Many of you may have already heard of the
Pomodoro Method, which is a timed session
of focused writing lasting 25 minutes, followed by a timed break of 5 minutes.
Some authors have taken to Pomodoros
easily, finding that the strategy helps them
get more done in less time. Other authors
have adjusted their session length to match
the time it takes them to write a chapter or a
scene. And some authors still find it hard to
fit an entire Pomodoro into their schedules,
which leaves them not doing any writing at
all.
That's why I wanted to introduce a new
twist on the timed session called the
8-minute writing habit. In this timed session, you write for only 8 minutes, one time a
day.

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Why 8 minutes, you wonder? What's so

special about it? There are three reasons why
I picked this number specifically:

#1 8 minutes is long enough to

produce something substantial,
but short enough that anyone can
do it
No matter how busy you are, it's hard to argue that you can't find 8 minutes to do
something that you've said is a priority. Most
of us easily spend 8 minutes a day stuck in
traffic, responding to a pointless social media update from one of our doofus Facebook
acquaintances, or playing Candy Crushor
actually, all three of these at the same time.
We can easily direct 8 minutes of that time
toward something productive that we actually want to do.
At the same time, 8 minutes is plenty of
time to make a substantial contribution to
your writing goal and manuscript word

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count. I have heard numerous accounts from

authors who can write 500-750 words in 8
minutes. If you were able to do even half of
that during your 8 minute session, you
would add 250 words to your manuscript
every day. Over the course of one year, you
would have 90,000 words, or one full-length
novel! Most people who are struggling with
finding time to write would be pretty happy
with that result.
Furthermore, you will write at much
faster speeds if you only give yourself 8
minutes. Have you ever heard the saying that
"work expands to fill the time you allot it"?
During my experiment in Write Better,
Faster, I found that my highest writing
speeds happened when I only did a single
timed session for that day. Sometimes, when
you have a small amount of time you are
more motivated to really make it count!
If you are still thinking, "Ugh, 8 minutes
a daywhy even bother?" I want you to take

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a look at your real numbers. First, find a

scrap piece of paper next to you or pull out
your phone and open a blank note in your favorite app. Next, write down an estimate of
how many words you've written in the last
month. Break that down by day (divide by 30
to keep things simple) and take a look at that
number. Is it more than 250 words?
I can't tell you how many times I ask
someone this and their number is zero or
close to it. No judgmentin fact, I have a ton
of empathy for you, because my number
used to be zero too! All I'm saying is maybe
what you've been doing isn't working. Let's
try something different for a bit and see if
that works better for you. Most writers who
implement the 8-minute writing habit will
end up writing more words per month than
someone who writes in sporadic hours here
and there.

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So never get stuck in the mindset that 8

minutes is not enough. And let's make next
month's average better than this month's!

#2 - The 8-minute writing habit

can be tacked onto or hooked into
your current morning, afternoon,
or evening routine
The beauty of writing only 8 minutes a day is
that it's so easy to incorporate into a routine
that you already have.
Most people already have morning
routines that include things like showering,
getting dressed, brushing your teeth, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, and more.
Most people also already have lunch routines
that consist of waiting in line to buy food, sitting with coworkers and chatting, or eating
at a desk while checking email or watching
Netflix. And finally, a lot of people have
evening routines including things like cooking a homemade dinner, working out,

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putting the kids to sleep at a certain time,

and reading in bed.
A full Pomodoro would be very difficult
to work into any of these currently established routines. It's not easy, for example, to
wake up 30 minutes early.
But an 8-minute writing session is different. It feels more manageable, because it
isand using this concept is going to allow
you to work your writing into any of the previously established routines you already
have. This is going to help you develop a consistent writing habit without having to
change your entire life around.
If you want to build your 8-minute writing habit into your current routine, BJ Fogg,
a Stanford professor and expert at building
habits, suggests starting with something as
simple as possible. He uses the trigger, action, reward framework, which is easy to implement with the 8-minute writing habit. In
this case, you would pick a trigger that's

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already in one of your routines, and then you

would do your 8-minute writing habit right
afterward. For example, if you eat a salad at
lunch every day, you would do your
8-minute writing habit right after you rinse
your fork in the lunch room.
I highly recommend BJ Fogg's Tiny
Habits program. You can learn more about it
at http://bjfogg.com.

#3 - Small habits grow over time

The 8-minute writing habit is purposely a
small, easy-to-implement writing session.
That's because I know from researching
habits that you are going to get addicted to it
and build upon it in the future.
An 8-minute writing habit is by no
means your set point for the rest of your
lifeit's merely a baseline. Small habits tend
to grow over time as long as you are consistent with them. The 8-minute writing habit
allows you to get super consistent with

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writing regularly, which is the first step to

achieving your larger goals.
In Write Better, Faster, I started out
trying to write fast, but learned over the
course of my experiment that consistency
was far more important than speed. You may
only be able to write for 8 minutes today, but
over time, as you start to build up a streak,
you will be able to add two sessions per day,
three sessions per day, and so on.
When you pair the 8-minute writing
habit with the other eight strategies in the
section, you'll see your results stack up. Remember, the 8-minute writing habit is just
the baselineyou can always do more on the
days you have time!

Strategy #2: Write In the

Morning
In Write Better, Faster, I discuss moving
your writing sessions around throughout the
day to find the time when you are an optimal
writer. If you don't have time to test this,
however, you should know that the result of
this experiment for most writers is to get one
session done in the morning.
Now that you know about the 8-minute
writing habit, you can supercharge it by pairing it with the second strategy, which is to
move your first writing session of the day to
the morning hours. If possible, you should
make your first writing session the very first
thing you do when you wake up.
Nearly every professional writer I know
uses the strategy for a number of reasons:

#1 - You should do your most important task first thing

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If you've ever studied habits, then you probably already know that you should do the
most important thing in your day as your
very first activity of the day. This helps you
be productive right away and helps you
check items off your list for the rest of the
day. You probably also already know that
you should put your number one priority in
its proper spotfirst thing. If you are interested in more of the research behind this,
you can grab the book Willpower by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister.

#2 - You'll write more throughout

the day
If you write first thing in the morning, you
connect to your manuscript very early on
and that stays with you throughout your day.
Even if your brain is not actively working on
it anymore, it is subconsciously working out
plot problems and characterization issues in
the background. Eight minutes is not a long

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time to write, so once you get into the groove

during that first session, you'll probably have
the ideas flowing. This will give you more
motivation to work on your manuscript
throughout the day.
This means that if you want to add a
second session on your lunch break, you're
more likely to follow through. It also means
that by the time evening rolls around, you've
probably been thinking about your
manuscript all day. This makes it easier to
get some writing done in the evening, too!

#3 - You'll boost your creative

energy
Of the hundreds of busy writers I talked to,
the number one thing they tell me is that
their day job sucks away all their energy and
makes it impossible for them to do anything
but veg out by the evening. Writing in the
morning means that you will not only bypass
that challenge, but you may even be able to

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boost your energy throughout the day. You'll

already be "on a roll" after your morning session, and your brain will feel woken up and
ready to go.
I've also heard from writers who found
that they are able to write at night if and
only if they do their 8-minute session in the
morning. So even if you have always written
better in the evenings, you can still activate
your mind in the morning to make sure you
get those evening sessions done.
I've tested this theory both on myself
and with other full-time writers in some of
my mastermind groups. All have reported
results that they ended up writing more
when they did their single Pomodoro session
at the beginning of their day. If you're able to
get in a full 25-minute Pomodoro in the
morning, great! But the results will still hold
even if you're only able to do your 8-minute
session. I've seen it work for both myself and
for others, but if you have any doubts then

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just give it a try for a week. If it's not helping

you write more, switch back!

Strategy #3: Take

Writing Mobile

Your

A lot of well-meaning writers will tell you

that you need a specific desk, a specific chair,
a specific keyboard, and specific equipment
to get your writing done. I believe this is one
way to do things, but my personal experience
and what I've learned from talking to
multiple full-time authors is that having
"perfect setup syndrome" can actually be incredibly counterproductive to getting your
writing done. Plenty of full-time authors are
not so specific about their writing routines,
and instead are willing to write anywhere
and any way.
There are three ways that mobility and
flexibility can help you get more words:

#1 - It takes the fussiness out of

Writing with a capital W

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If you can write anywhere, on the go, on any

device you own, then there is really no excuse to not get a bit of writing in!
Too often we attach a lot of drama to
writing and make it a bigger deal than it is.
At the end of the day, it's just one word after
the other.
Too often we think of books in chapters
and scenes. But really, you can easily spend a
few minutes on the go writing up a paragraph or two at a time of your book. Mobility
forces us to utilize small pockets of time and
imperfect tools to accomplish what we need.

#2 - It allows you to use spare moments for writing sprint sessions

Most of us think we have very little free time,
but we all know that we have little pockets of
spare time throughout our day. We have
long, frustrating commutes, boring waits in
lines, and unexpected changes in plans that
add up to hundreds of wasted minutes

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throughout the month. Going mobile allows

us to utilize that spare time and do
something productive instead.
You can get very creative about getting
your 8-minute writing session in just about
anywhere. I know authors who write in bed,
in the grocery line, on the train, on their
lunch break, or during their commute.
All those little sessions throughout the
day can add up to several thousand words by
the end of it.

#3 - It lets you implement the other eight strategies easily

I mentioned in the last strategy that, if possible, you should get your writing session in
as the very first thing you do when you wake
up. I know countless authors who have a
consistent daily writing habit solely because
they keep their laptop right next to their bed.
They literally wake up, pull their laptop over,
and start typing. They are that dedicated!

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Personally, I keep an old iPad with a detachable keyboard on my nightstand next to

my bed. In the mornings, I will pull it over
and get started typing something for the
dayan email, a blog post, or sometimes
even a scene from the book I'm working on. I
only do it for 15-20 minutes, but it makes a
huge difference in my mood as I approach
work for the day.
Writing in bed is quirky and not for
everyone, but it is pretty cool that you could
get your 8-minute writing session done before you even get out of bed. How easy is
that?
This is just one example of how these
strategies can stack up to help you get much
more writing done.
So how do you take your writing mobile?
You only need to set up three things:
Have your notes and outlines
ready to go in multiple formats -

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going mobile does take a bit of preplanning and having your books outlined ahead of time. You need to be
able to pull up your notes quickly and
know exactly what you're going to
write in your draft. Unfortunately,
the most popular novel-writing app,
Scrivener, is not mobile yet at the
time of this writing, which means you
may have to do some simple copy +
paste of your notes to be sure that
you have them on the go.
Use a software program like
Evernote or Simplenote that
syncs across multiple devices it's easier to keep your notes synced
and your content all in one place
when you use an app that does this
automatically. Simplenote can be
synced with Scrivener (though
without formattingkind of annoying), but I tend to just copy + paste

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my chapters or scenes into the correct section in Scrivener.

Learn about input devices other
than your keyboard - we'll talk
about this in the next section!

Strategy #4: Embrace New

Input Devices
Once you've gone mobile with your writing,
the next step is to get comfortable with the
idea of not using a keyboard as your input
device. A lot of writers are resistant to this
idea, but the ones who embrace other input
devices are writing significantly faster than
the ones who are gun shy. Here are a few to
consider:

#1 - Predictive Text (also known as

swipe-to-text)
You may be great at texting or that tiny keyboard on your smartphone may drive you absolutely nuts. There's a new technology
called predictive text which allows you to
swipe across your keyboard in a fluid motion
to create words. It's already built in to many
of the newer smartphone models for both
iPhone and Android, but you can also

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download an app called Swype that does the

same thing. For professional texters, this
technology will have you texting faster, while
all the rest of us are just happy that we don't
have to peck at minuscule buttons on a
3-inch screen anymore.

#2 - Voice
Dictation

Recognition

or

Even faster than swiping, you can use voice

recognition on just about any newer device
you ownit's built in. If you don't have builtin functionality you can download the
Dragon Speech app for iPhone or Android,
which allows you to dictate for up to five
minutes at a time and email it to yourself.
For your computer, I recommend dictation
software by Nuance called Dragon Naturally
Speaking (for Windows) and Dragon Dictate
(for Mac). This software is available for under $200 and can be downloaded instantly
here:

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ProseOnFire.com/Dragon/
I love dictation and use it regularly to
dictate my book. I even wrote a book on the
topic called Dictate Your Book: How To
Write Your Book Faster, Better, and
Smarter. You can check it out here:
ProseOnFire.com/Dictate/
So let's talk about dictation for a minute.
The reason I got into dictation in the
first place is because I found that typing too
fast and too often really hurt my hands and
became a physical impairment for me. Having an option to give my hands a break has
been a lifesaver for me, and enabled me to
write way more words this year than I would
normally have done.
The true benefits of dictation, however,
are when you go mobile. Because all devices
have voice recognition and speech-to-text

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technology built in, it's really easy to quickly

input content to your mobile device. Your
phone is also probably one of the best ways
to get started with dictation because you can
find so many free programs!
Again, if you're interested in this topic, I
share 50-60 of my best tips about getting
started with dictation in Dictate Your Book.
It's available here:
ProseOnFire.com/Dictate/

#3 - Dictation to a Dedicated
Recorder
If you prefer, you can dictate your content to
a dedicated recorder and get it transcribed. It
is more expensive to have it professionally
transcribed, so my recommendation is to run
your saved audio file through your dictation
software. It's pretty easy to do if you use
Dragonyou simply upload your audio file
to their transcription option and the

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software produces a document of text for

you. This adds mobility to your dictation
setup because normally you would need to be
sitting in front of your computer with a
microphone.
You probably already have most of the
equipment you need to do this, especially
now that there are so many recording apps
available for five dollars or less on most
devices you own, including your smartphone, your tablets, and any laptop or
desktop that you have. Most devices have a
microphone built in as well.
If you want to get fancy, the same company that makes the Dragon line of dictation
software has recently come out with a dedicated recorder that essentially syncs up your
transcription when you plug it in to your
computer. At the time of writing, it's only
available for Windows users.f
If you're feeling a little resistant to some
of
this
new
technology,
don't

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stressnobody's taking away your keyboard.

You don't have to switch over entirely, and
the best way to get started is just to take a
few simple steps toward learning and getting
comfortable with these other input options.
For example, instead of dictating your first
draft of a book, you may want to try dictating
your outline or notes.
Of all the strategies that I list in this
book, embracing new input devices is the
one that I really encourage you to try. Only
30 years ago, we were primarily writing
books on typewriters. Before that, people
wrote out their ideas by hand. This new technology is not in some far off future, it's the
present. We are moving toward a mobile,
hands-free world and these technologies are
only going to become more prominent as our
society embraces them in everyday use. Now
is the time to be an early adopter and get
ahead of the curve. It's good for your future

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writing career to stay abreast of these

technologies!

Strategy
Method

#5:

Use

the

Plan

Even though all of these strategies have

made it simple to get your writing in every
day, there will still be days where even the
smallest of steps seems monumental. These
are days when your emotions are in flux,
when you wake up and everything seems to
be going wrong, or when you're simply exhausted and you just can't do anything more
than the baseline commitments.
A lot of people get derailed when they
have a bad day, though full-time writers
know that a single bad day doesn't have to
result in a train wreck.
To get through my own bad days, I use a
simple trick called the Plan C method. We've
all heard of plan A, Plan B, and so on. Plan A
is when everything is going perfectly and
falling into place exactly as we imagined it.
Many of us start out the week this way and
have
super-productive
Mondays
and

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Tuesdays before things start to slip on

Wednesday.
Plan B is the backup plan, which is when
we shift things around or cut things out because we aren't able to stick to our original
plan. This could be something as easy as
moving a Wednesday writing session to
Saturday morning, or squeezing in that extra
writing session after dinner instead of at its
usual time. Plan B is never the ideal situation, nor the most efficient, nor the most
optimal, but it allows you some flexibility in
your life for when emergencies come up or
things have to be adjusted. In most cases, it's
better to get in a suboptimal writing session
than to have no writing session at all.
Plan C is the catastrophe plan, or what
to do when things are truly going to shit.
This is when you haven't written for three
days and you are behind on a deadline you
set for yourself and you haven't had a client
in a while and work is crazy stressful and the

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kids are sick Basically when it feels like

everything in the universe is working against
you. How do you get your writing done then?
Or, if this has been going on for more
than a day, how do you get back on track
with writing at all, without letting the entire
month pass having produced nothing?
Plan C is the barest of bonesit's the
least amount you can do to essentially "check
the box" for the day. For some of you, Plan C
might be that 8-minute writing habit in the
morning. For some, it might be for the few
minutes you're waiting in line, you speak a
paragraph of your draft into your smartphone and email it to yourself. For others, it
might be that you open your manuscript and
read through the most recent chapter and
make a list of all the things you want to add,
subtract, or change moving forward.
Your Plan C can be anything you want,
but the important thing is that you have
something in place that allows you to "check

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the box." Because even if your life is going

crazy and the world is conspiring against
you, you're going to feel much better if you're
able to check off your writing commitment
for the day. As you string together these days
of at least hitting your Plan C, you will find
the motivation again to work your way up to
Plan B, and then finally to Plan A.
My personal Plan C that always brings
me back to my regular writing schedule is to
write a short blog post or an update on
Google+. It's a super-small commitment for
me and it gets me back into the habit of writing. Every single time, within a few days I'm
back to working on my manuscripts and setting aside more time to build my writing
business.
A word for the wisebe where you're at
in your writing journey. Don't say Plan A is
writing 8 hours a day, Plan B is writing 4
hours a day, and Plan C is writing 2 hours a
day. Come up with a Plan C that is truly

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something you could do in just a couple

minutes a day, that would genuinely help
move your writing project forward. Do the
same thing with Plan B and Plan A. If you
don't have a consistent daily writing habit
already, for example, your Plan A should
probably be the 8-minute writing habit in
the morning.
As you build your consistent writing
habit, your Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C can
change and grow with your abilities. Until
then, pick something realistic that is going to
make you feel really, really good about yourself when you complete it.

Strategy #6: Use the Method of

Descent
Writer's block is one of the things that stops
aspiring authors dead in their tracks. But
there is a really simple way to avoid writer's
block completely and get something down on
paper, even if it's not in the form that's going
to eventually become your book.
Before I get deeper into this strategy, I
want to issue a word of warningtaking
notes on your book is not the same as writing
the first draft of your book. A first draft is always going to be more valuable, even if it's
not a great first draft.
That said, there are some days when you
simply cannot write that first draft because
you're experiencing some sort of writer's
block. That's perfectly fine! In cases like
these, you can keep yourself on track by using the Method of Descent.
What is the Method of Descent? It's
pretty simple: when you're having trouble

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writing your first draft, go one level down

and write there instead. I use three different
levels of note-taking below my first draft,
and you can customize these levels to anything you wantanything that works particularly well for you. Here are my levels:

Outline (lowest level) I write

two sentences to a paragraph per
chapter about what will happen in
the chapter.
Beats I expand the outline to
roughly five paragraphs per chapter,
this time indicating whether a section
is dialogue, description, or internal
monologue. Each of these three requires a different writing mindset,
and most authors gravitate toward
one a little more.
Sketches I turn each beat from
"tell" to "show," thinking of them as

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short instructions for what should be

on the page. I don't bother writing in
connectors or transitions between the
beats, just try to hit between
300500 words with each beat. Essentially, I sketch out the scene
without drawing firm lines.
Draft (highest leveland what
I'm aiming for) I clean the sketch
to what I call "compile," which in
software terms, means that the program actually runs (there are no syntax errors). For the fiction version of
"compile," I consider it compilable
when I could hand it to someone and
they could read it with no missing
parts. This doesn't necessarily mean
that the draft is perfect, but the draft
communicates the story well enough
that no one would say, "Hey, how did
they jump from the bedroom to the
restaurant?"

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So when I'm struggling to write my

draft, I'll go down a level and attempt to
write sketches. If I can't write sketches, I'll go
down another level and attempt to write
beats, and so on.
Most professional authors have some
sort of Method of Descent similar to mine
(though of course every author is going to
customize it to suit his or her own needs).
The reason is because it's very easy to get out
of the habit of writing. When you feel a bout
of writer's block coming on, you might be
tempted to skip your writing session for the
day, but in the end it's just going to make the
block worse and worse. It's comparable to
putting off your taxes all through the month
of April. Yes, they may seem complicated on
April 1st, but avoiding them for the next ten
days does not make them easier to do on
April 11th.

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Professional authors know that it's

much less about what you put on the page
than it is about maintaining your consistent
habit. Think of writing on a consistent basis
as something that you get a pass/fail grade
on. If that's the case, then it's better to use
the Method of Descent and drop down to a
loose draft, or detailed note-taking, than it is
to skip altogether.
The second great thing about the Method of Descent is not only that you're keeping
your habit, but you're also unblocking yourself slowly. As you take your notes, you are
actually working out the block at the same
time. I always find that even if I drop down
to the outline level, within a few days I'm
working my way back up. Within less than a
week, I'm back to working on my draft again.
So use the Method of Descent and experiment with what works for you. You'll truly
never have to face debilitating writer's block
again.

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If you want to learn more about each of

my four levels, you can go to
ProseOnFire.com/tracking and I'll send you
my 4-step process for beating writer's block.
I also write about these levels in Write Better, Faster!

Strategy #7: Collaborate With a

Fellow Writer
If you're having trouble staying accountable,
you can use collaboration with another
writer who's at about the same level as you to
grow your catalog quickly.
Now, of course it would be great to collaborate with someone who's much further
ahead of you, but it might be more challenging to find someone because you won't have
much to offer them in terms of either your
storytelling skills or your marketing pull.
Collaborating with another writer might
seem like a sticky challenge you don't want
to take on at this point, but for me personally, it was one of the things that truly
skyrocketed my author career. I was able to
write 8 books and one short story in 2014
primarily because I worked with other authors. One of the collaborations I did was on
a fresh pen name that was in the romance
genre. I collaborated with an author who is

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still one of my best friends to this day. She

and I have complementary skills sets and she
was able to fill in a lot of gaps on those books
that I wasn't able to fill in myself. Because we
collaborated on the work, we not only
learned a ton from each other, but we were
able to create a series that is still popular to
this day.
That was great in the short term, but in
the long term we achieved so much more.
We both upped our storytelling game rapidly
and those new skill sets quickly assimilated
into our already established writing styles.
When I picked up the series by myself in the
later books, I was able to mimic the style that
we had established together, and the transition was fairly seamless even though she
wasn't writing with me anymore.
Another collaboration I did in 2014 was
an author anthology that ended up having
about 25 short stories total. Without this author collaboration, I wouldn't have met so

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many of the authors that I talk to on a regular basis still, and I also wouldn't have the
short story that I ended up writing from the
anthology. That short story is the basis for a
future series that I hope to extend in the next
couple years.
The anthology had tight deadlines and a
rigorous peer review process that forced me
to stay on the schedule with my short story.
Without the help of all these other authors,
that short story never would have happened.
I'm so grateful to these authors for pushing
me to do more in a short period of time.
No matter which way you choose to collaborate, the accountability you get from
working with other authors is second to
none. Other authors are going to motivate
you, push you, and teach you new skill sets
that are going to be incredibly valuable to
you for the rest of your author career.
I don't have any collaborations this year
because my schedule is too tight, but I

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definitely recommend this strategy if you are

trying to get the ball rolling on your career.
I've seen so many authors use it to launch
their careers with great success. Within a
year or two they "graduate" to working on
solo projects with more skills and faster production times than they would have accomplished without the collaborative experience
first. (Myself included!)

Strategy #8: Get Your Family Involved

We've already discussed how your writing
habit needs to work with your current priorities and commitments rather than in opposition to them. The pro-authors that I know
actively involve their families in their writing
career. This can be done in a variety of ways:

#1 - Make your family your first

audience
You can read your story out loud to them in
the evenings, you can send your first draft
chapter by chapter to your spouse, and you
can even let your spouse or older kids
provide feedback and help you edit.

#2 - Talk about your writing every

day
Just like you would ask your children what
they did at school that day, you can talk

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about what you did for your author career

that day. This helps you not only get buy-in
from your family, but it also helps you stay
accountable to them, particularly your
spouse, who is likely giving up something in
order to help you along.

#3 - Reward your family for your

progress
Your family can help you stay accountable to
not only yourself but also to them. Just like
you would create a "chore chart" for your
kids, you can create an "author career movement chart" for the entire family to view. As
you complete specific tasks or milestones,
give yourself a gold star and make sure the
reward benefits the entire family. For example, if you finish three chapters this week,
everybody gets to go out for ice cream on
Sunday. This will not only help you reward
your family for cheering you on, but it will
also reward them for respecting the

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boundaries that you put in place around your

writing time and other activities you need to
do to build your author career.
It will take a bit of tweaking, but you can
apply this same concept to your coworkers,
friends, or extended family.

Strategy #9: Set Public Deadlines

Above any of the other patterns and
strategies I've called out in this book, the one
that every single professional author uses is
to have their release schedules set far in advance. Many (including myself) release just a
few times a year and are always working toward a deadline. Some authors in 2015 know
exactly what they are writing in 2016, 2017,
and even 2018.
It's not enough to set a deadline on your
Google calendar that no one else can see.
You also have to publicize that deadline. And
there's no better way to publicize your deadline than with pre-orders.
Now, before you get started with pre-orders, I have to warn you that most of the retailers have strict policies on changing a preorder date. Amazon, for example, will ban
you from their pre-order program for an entire year if you have to move your pre-order
date to later due to not having the book done

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on time. So before you get started, make sure

you have a solid idea of what you are writing
(outline and beats, if possible) and a reasonable plan with built-in leeway to get it done.
For example, I know my production
numbers pretty well. I know that I can write
4000-5000 words a day without burnout, if I
spread those words out throughout an entire
day. I know that it takes me about the same
amount of time to edit a book that it takes
me to draft a book. This means that if I have
a 75,000 word book, I know it will take me
about 19 days to draft and 19 days to edit,
given that I'm on my A-game during those
days.
Of course, that is if I have nothing else
planned. Throw in a vacation, a big project,
or an emergency, and those numbers go
straight out the window. So what I would
probably do instead is budget about 2.5
months to work on a project like this, and try
to have it completely done and uploaded

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within the first six weeks. Then it would be

ready on pre-order and I could spend that
extra month marketing it.
While you do really have to know your
production abilities to make deadlines work,
once you've perfected your system for creating books you can give yourself deadlines to
finish them.
I used to hate deadlines, but now I actually love them. I wouldn't get nearly as much
done without them, because they force me to
focus on just a few projects at a time and to
get the editing done in a timely matter. I
tend to enjoy the drafting part of the process
more than the editing part, so this has always been a problem for me in the past. With
the deadline in place, I know that every day
counts and I'll be in a world of hurt (and
pulling multiple all-nighters) if I don't consistently hit my weekly word count.
I put setting deadlines last because it's a
tricky one and potentially best left to more

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seasoned writers. However, if you thrive on

deadlines and know that they will help you
stop procrastinating, go ahead and set
onejust make sure you haven't bitten off
more than you can chew, because the retailers and your fans will penalize you!

Part 3: The 8 x 8 Challenge

Ready to start test-driving some of these
tips? Get in on the 8 x 8 Challenge8 days, 8
minutes a day!
This challenge will help you take the
ideas and concepts you've learned in this
book and actually implement them so your
writing habits improve. In the challenge, we
stack the strategies shared in Part 2 of this
book so you can see major results quickly, on
only 8 minutes of writing a day.
You can run with the challenge selfstudy today and/or you can also sign up to
take the next session of the free LIVE version, which includes me as your virtual
coach! This is a great way to boost your efforts or just to get you back on track with
your writing goals. Sign up here:
ProseOnFire.com/8x8

Day 1: 8-Minute Sprints

Your 8-Minute Challenge for the day: Open
the project you are working on and set a
timer. Block out all other distractions. Write
for 8 minutes, starting now!
It doesn't matter what you type, all that
matters is that you stick through your eight
minutes. You can write just a few words if
you wantdoesn't matter! The only rule is
that you have to spend the full eight minutes
thinking about your project with your fingers
to the keyboard.
If you've never experienced flow before
with writing, you might find yourself entering a dreamlike, low-conscious state as your
fingers take over and you forget what you're
doing. That's perfectly okay! In fact, it may
be fun to close your eyes while the timer is
going. Pretend that you're meditating and let
your mind drift and your fingers move to record your thoughts.

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When you are done with your 8-minute

session, post a pic of yourself, your words, or
whatever you want on social media with the
hashtag #8minutewritinghabit. If you want
me to see it, make sure you tag Monica Leonelle. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest, Tumblr, and more, so don't be shy
and use whatever social channel you want
during this challenge!

Day 2: 8-Minute Switchup

What did you think of yesterday's exercise?
Did you accomplish something? Did you
make it all the way through? Did you get
words that you think you could use for your
book?
The most important thing right now is
not whether you made progress on your
draft. Now, obviously, we eventually do want
to make progress on our drafts, but for this
challenge the entire goal for the first day was
just to help you realize that you can actually
sit and type for 8 minutes.
If all has gone well in the 8x8 Challenge,
you've shown yourself that you can fit writing into your current schedule, no big deal.
So if you completed yesterday's exercise,
you've proven to yourself that you have the
time, energy, and resources to write for at
least eight minutes every day. That's huge.
Before we get to today's exercise, I want
you to think a bit about your writing

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experience from yesterday. What could you

have done to make it better? What could you
have done to make it feel more productive?
What do you want to try next time you do
your 8 minutes? Find a sheet of paper and
write out by hand some notes on how the
8-minute writing habit felt to you. Some suggestions for next time:
You could try dictation instead of
typing
You could try working on your
manuscript instead of writing an
email
You could try writing at your standing desk instead of being slumped
over in your chair
You could try writing in the morning
before you go to work or deal with
the kids instead of writing at the very
end of the day

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None of these suggestions is any better

than the others; these are just a few things
that you might want to try. So now that
you've gotten all your notes down, let's move
on to today's challenge.
Today's challenge is I want you to take
one of the things you wrote in your notes and
implement it today during your 8-minute
writing habit session. That's rightI'm going
to ask you to write for eight minutes again.
But this time I want you to change
something about your setup just to keep
things fresh and interesting.
It doesn't matter what you change and it
doesn't matter if you feel like your routine is
perfect already. The goal for today is just to
get you out of your comfort zone and experimenting with another way of doing things.
Who knowsyou might find that today's
8-minute session is much better than
yesterday's. You might find that the opposite
is true and you much prefer your first day's

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session. It doesn't matter, because whatever

you decide you'll have learned something interesting about yourself and how you like to
write.
Ready to prep for tomorrow? Your
prep for tomorrow is to get yourself set up on
mobile. We're going to take your writing
routine on the road!
We're doing this because one of the major blockers that all writers have is that they
want to have this ideal situation for writing.
But what I want you to understand during
this challenge is that there is no need for an
ideal situation. Professional writers are constantly writing, no matter what else is going
on around them. They're texting their ideas
to themselves via their phones, they're talking on their voice recorders on the way to
work, or they're writing out their ideas in a
notebook by hand.
So before you go to sleep tonight, I want
you to figure out how you can take your

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project on the road. This doesn't have to be

hard, and I don't want you to buy any new
equipmentwhat you already own and have
in front of you is fine.
If you're using Scrivener, for example, I
don't want you to go out and get new software that syncs with iPad or to buy a new
iPad just for this purpose (sorry guys).
What I want you to do instead is just
copy + paste some of your notes into a free
app that syncs with your smartphone. If you
don't want to download an app, email yourself these notes so you can access them from
any computer or device you check from. If
you don't have a smartphone, you can also
print out the notes for the next chapter of
your book and carry them in your handbag
or backpack throughout the day.
Think of the simplest way possible to
make yourself more mobile. If you enjoy
checklists, I encourage you to go so mobile
that you would be able to write:

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At the grocery store, standing in the

fresh produce aisle
Sitting on your couch
Sitting at a nearby park
Sitting in your car
On your lunch break at work
Laying down in bed either right as
you wake up or right when you are
about to sleep
Pack up your system or systems for being able to write the very next part of your
book at any of these locations, and I'll see
you tomorrow!

Day 3: 8-Minute Mobile

It's day three, and as you probably suspected, we're going mobile!
But before we do that, I want you to
complete your 8-minute writing habit in
front of your computer sometime throughout
the day. If you're able to do it in the morning,
that would be best, but it's not required. Do
your 8-minute writing habit in the most
comfortable way possible, and then come
back to this lesson because we're going to
play with writing on the go.
Did you do it?
Great!
Now that you're done with your eight
minutes for the day, we're going to do an extra session that's just for fun. This is going to
be the mobile session. And you can feel free
to keep doing your sessions mobile
throughout the rest of the challenge. Totally
optional, but really fun, and I'd love to see if

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you can make it through all six for the rest of

this challenge.
What you see below is not just a list, but
rather an 8x8 Scavenger Hunt.
How do you play? All you have to do is
find some wayany way of your choosingto get some extra words in at each of
these different locations:
At the grocery store, standing in the
fresh produce aisle
Sitting on your couch
Sitting at a nearby park
Sitting in your car
On your lunch break at work
Laying down in bed either right as
you wake up or right when you are
about to sleep
As you complete the hunt, I want you to
take a picture of either yourself or your word

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count for each list item and post it on your

favorite social media channel.
Now, let's have fun with this for the rest
of the challenge and happy hunting!
I'll be hunting your results on every social media channel that I'm available on. All
you have to do is post your results with the
hashtag #8minutewritinghabit. If you want
to make sure that I see your posts, make sure
you tag Monica Leonelle. I'm on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and
more, so don't be shy and use whatever social channel you want during this challenge!
Prep for tomorrow: Don't be
alarmed, but I need you to adjust your alarm
so you wake up 15 minutes earlier than normal. I know, I know, but it will be worth it, I
promise. See you tomorrow!

Day 4: 8-Minute Morning

Good morning, good morning! How is your
scavenger hunt coming? I hope you're having
fun trying to hit all the different locations
that I gave you!
Today's challenge is simple but important. I want you to do your 8-minute writing
habit as part of your morning routine today.
Yesterday, I had you rearrange your schedule
and set an alarm so you could wake up about
15 minutes earlier than you normally would.
Now that you are up 15 minutes earlier than
usual today, you can do your 8-minute writing habit right now, before the day gets away
from you ready? Go!
Keep posting your scavenger hunt pics
on social media! I'll be hunting your results
on every social media channel that I'm available on. All you have to do is post your results with the hashtag #8minutewritinghabit.
If you want to make sure that I see your
posts, make sure you tag Monica Leonelle.

134/158

I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and more, so don't be shy
and use whatever social channel you want
during this challenge!
Prep for tomorrow: don't switch off
that alarm just yetI want to you to wake up
at the same time tomorrow and get those 8
minutes in first thing again. You can do it!

Day 5: 8-Minute Increase

Hey there! Today's challenge is twofold:
First, do your 8-minute writing habit
with your morning routine today. Make a
note of where it fits inbefore shower, after
shower, before kids wake up, etc. This will
come in handy when the challenge is over.
Next, I want you to spend the rest of the
day finding little pockets of time in which
you can add a bit more to the word counts
you already got this morning. It doesn't have
to be much, just a sentence or two during
your downtime. You can even count any of
your mobile check-ins from the scavenger
hunt toward this goal!
What I would love to see is for you to
double whatever your word count was for
your first 8-minute writing session
throughout the rest of the day. So if you
wrote 250 words in your session this morning, I want you to find a couple minutes
throughout the rest of the day to write at

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least 250 more words. You can go way beyond that if you want, but for today we're just
trying to double what we produce this morning and keep our momentum going. And
we're trying to do it in our spare time!
Keep posting your scavenger hunt pics
on social media! I'll be hunting your results
on every social media channel that I'm available on. All you have to do is post your results with the hashtag #8minutewritinghabit.
If you want to make sure that I see your
posts, make sure you tag Monica Leonelle.
I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and more, so don't be shy
and use whatever social channel you want
during this challenge!

Day 6: 8-Minute Accountability

There you are!
Day 6only two more to go after this.
You can do it, especially because today's
challenge is easy!
Throughout this challenge I've been asking you to post your results on social media,
and you've maybe or maybe not been doing
it.
Today, aside from your 8-minute writing session, this is the ONLY other thing you
need to do.
Why?
Because accountability is incredibly important for establishing any type of habit.
You can't be accountable to people if you are
hiding behind your screen, not telling anyone how awesome you are, can you?
So go ahead and post using the hashtag
#8minutewritinghabit so everyone in the
challenge can see that you're getting those
sessions done.

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Don't forget to tag Monica Leonelle if

you want me to see it!

Day 7: 8-Minute Planning

Good morning!
Go ahead and get your 8-minute writing
session in, then come back and read about
today's challenge.

Hey there, you're back!

Today's challenge requires a bit of math.
You now have at least seven 8-minute sessions in the bankhooray! I want you to
write down those word count totals and figure out the average number of words you're
getting per session. This doesn't have to be
100% accurate, we just need a ballpark
figure.
Now, I want you to figure out how many
8-minute writing sessions it will take you to
finish the first draft of your current project.
30 sessions? 100 sessions? 300 sessions? You get this number by taking the

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total word count of your project and dividing

it by the average number of words per
session.
If you aren't sure how long your project
might be, you can use these estimates:

Full-length novel - 80,000+ words

Novel - 40,000-79,999 words
Novella - 17,500-39,999 words
Novelette - 7,500-17,499 words
Short story - 7,499 words or fewer

Lastly, I want you to figure out how

many days it will take you to finish the first
draft of your current project. You can figure
this out assuming one session per day, or you
can see what it would be like if you doubled
up on sessions a few times a week.
Is all of this starting to feel like less of a
challenge and more of a solid plan for getting
your draft done?

141/158

Let me know by posting your numbers

on social media with the hashtag #8minutewritinghabit. If you want to make sure that I
see your posts, make sure you tag Monica
Leonelle. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and more, so
don't be shy and use whatever social channel
you want during this challenge!

Day 8: 8-Minute Results

Today is the last day of the challenge! You
made it!
In honor of the last day I want to talk
about something really important in this
challengeyour results!
When you are done with your 8-minute
writing session today, take an extra few
minutes to evaluate what you've accomplished on your writing goals this week. How
many words did you get? How many wacky
places did you write? How can you keep up
the 8-minute writing habit going forward?
Reflect on this and let me know your answers. You can post publicly on any social
media site and tag Monica Leonelle so I can
see it and congratulate you on a job well
done.
Moving forward: The challenge may
be ending but that doesn't mean your
8-minute writing habit has to. It's so easy to
keep going with it, so make sure you do! And

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let me know when your book comes out, because I'll be eager to see the finished
product!

Additional Resources
Original Articles
You can find my weekly articles at
ProseOnFire.com/blog/
Don't forget to sign up for more information on future books in this series:
ProseOnFire.com/Storytellers/
So many good books coming up!

Building Habits
Need to build a habit, like now? Try the Tiny
Habits program by BJ Fogg. He's a PhD, and
it's free! Tinyhabits.com
Want to learn some new strategies to
build habits based on your personality and
inclinations? Try Better Than Before by
Gretchen Rubin. You can also learn all about
your habit-building style at:

145/158

https://www.surveygizmo.com/
s3/1950137/Four-TendenciesJanuary-2015
Curious about willpower, habit, and how
they work together? Try Willpower by Roy F.
Baumeister and John Tierney.
Combat resistance with The War of Art
by Steven Pressfield.
Build a writing habit ASAP with inspiration from Dean Wesley Smith's blog at
deanwesleysmith.com.

Productivity
No one knows more about insanely weird
productivity hacks than Tim. Try The 4-Hour
Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
Get my full Walk 'n Talk setup, my most
optimal writing configuration that has

146/158

produced 4000+ words per hour speeds, at

proseonfire.com/dictation/.

Tracking
Get my tracking spreadsheet completely
free!
ProseOnFire.com/
tracking
Use MenuCountdown on Mac or e.ggtimer.com/ to keep track of your Pomodoros.

More From Monica

Looking to build an email list? Check
out the easy-to-implement 3-step Email ListBuilding Framework (webinar replay):
ProseOnFire.com/3step
Trying to write a fiction book or
books? You will probably love my First 5
Pages Scorecard, which helps you rate how
effective your novel opening chapter is in
hooking your readers. Perfect if you are

147/158

trying to optimize your ebook sample!

ProseOnFire.com/first1000
Want to get a list of EVERY tool I
use for my business (including my full
dictation setup, all the software I use,
and more?) Get my Author Equipment List
so you never need to search for the perfect
tool
again.
ProseOnFire.com/
equipment

Remember!
If you enjoyed this book, there are two things
you can do that will really help spread the
word about it:

#1: You Can Write a Review

As an independent author, reviews are one of
the most important ways I have to get the
word out. Your review will encourage others
to grab the book. You can share anything,
but here are a few ideas:

What you liked about the book

What you didn't like about the book
Your favorite chapter/part in the
book
Three things you are going to implement from the book
The results you hope to get or have
already gotten from the book

149/158

Go to ProseOnFire.com/pof8 if you
want to leave a review and help others discover a new way to write!
Also, make sure you send it to me at
monicaleonelle@gmail.com (my personal
email address) so I can thank you properly
for your support.
When you do, also tell me a little about
yourself (optional, of course). Perhaps name
ONE thing you want to change about your
writing process. I'd love to hear from
youmy email pals often inspire blog posts,
which I love to dedicate to them!

#2: You Can Tell Three Authors

You Know About This Book
There are probably a few author friends who
could benefit from this information, right?
Why not send them an email or text with the

150/158

title of the book right now? Takes just a few

seconds, and you can do it from your phone!
Email or Text: Check out The 8-Minute
Writing Habit, by Monica Leonelle on
Amazon! I enjoyed it and thought you would
too.
I greatly appreciate all your support!
Please let me know if I'm able to help you
with anything in the future: monicaleonelle@gmail.com.

Sign Up For More

Be the first to know about upcoming books.
ProseOnFire.com/Storytellers/

About the Author

Monica Leonelle was born in Germany and
spent her childhood jet-setting around the
world with her American parents. Her
travels include most of the United States and
Europe, as well as Guam, Japan, South
Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.
She started publishing independently in
2009 and has since published over half a
million words of fiction spread across five
series, Socialpunk, Waters Dark and Deep,
Emma + Elsie, and two under a pen name.
In 2014, she published 8 books and one
short story.
She writes about indie publishing at
ProseOnFire.com. Her most recent nonfiction book, Write Better, Faster, has
earned raving reviews from the independent
publishing community for going deeper than
anyone else into the topic of writing speed.
She currently averages around 3,000 words

152/158

per hour and writes 25,000+ words per week

(most weeks).
Before becoming an independent author, Monica led digital marketing efforts at
Inc. 100 companies like Hansen's Natural
and Braintree.
Monica is a lifetime member of Sigma Pi
Sigma honor fraternity and was a 2007 Chicago Business Fellow, graduating with an
MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business at 25 years old. She holds a Bachelor of
Science in Computer Science with a minor in
Physics from Truman State University.
She's been an avid blogger of marketing
and business trends since 2007. Her ideas
have been featured in AdAge, The Huffington Post, the AMEX OpenForum, GigaOm,
Mashable, Social Media Today, and the
Christian Science Monitor. In 2009, she was
named one of the top 25 Tweeters in the city
of Chicago by ChicagoNow, a subsidiary of
the Chicago Tribune.

Copyright
This material is provided "as-is" without any
warranty of any kind. Every effort has been
made to ensure the accuracy of this book;
however, errors and omissions may occur.
The publisher assumes no responsibility for
any damages arising from the use of this
book.
Copyright 2015 by Monica Leonelle
All rights reserved. No portion of this
book may be reproduced or transmittedelectronically, mechanically, graphically, or by any other means, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval systemwithout
written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data is available.
Spaulding House Publishing

154/158

600 S. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60605
First Edition
First Printing
Author: Monica Leonelle
Cover Icons: Made by Freepik from
Flaticon and licensed CC BY 3.0

Table of Contents
Contents
The 8-Minute Writing Habit
Get on the ARC List!
Introduction
Part 1: Bust Through the Author Blocks
That Are Keeping You From Writing
Blocker #1: Writing Might Not
Pay Off
Blocker #2: Writing is a Lottery
That I'm Unlikely To Win
Blocker #3: I'm Not Good
Enough To Be a Writer
Blocker #4: I'm Distracted By
Life/Family/Work
Blocker #5: I'm Stuck in the
Planning/Writing/Editing
Phase
Part 2: Nine Strategies the Pros Use To
Write Consistently

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Strategy #1: Write For an

8-Minute Timed Session
Strategy #2: Write In the
Morning
Strategy #3: Take Your Writing
Mobile
Strategy #4: Embrace New Input Devices
Strategy #5: Use the Plan C
Method
Strategy #6: Use the Method of
Descent
Strategy #7: Collaborate With a
Fellow Writer
Strategy #8: Get Your Family
Involved
Strategy
#9:
Set
Public
Deadlines
Part 3: The 8 x 8 Challenge
Day 1: 8-Minute Sprints
Day 2: 8-Minute Switchup
Day 3: 8-Minute Mobile

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Day 4: 8-Minute Morning

Day 5: 8-Minute Increase
Day 6: 8-Minute Accountability
Day 7: 8-Minute Planning
Day 8: 8-Minute Results
Additional Resources
Remember!
About the Author
Copyright

@Created by PDF to ePub