Your writing will become something you just do rather than strive to do.
I didn’t start running until I was 40. I was working, raising kids and going to the gym but too busy to spend a lot of time there. I asked myself, “What is the biggest bang for the buck in exercise?” I kept coming back to the same answer: running.
Nothing beats running for efficiency in covering multiple health benefits. Within about 30 minutes, I could simultaneously get my cardio out of the way, build leg muscles and work my core. I wouldn’t have to find a competitor or gather a whole team for a game of some sort; I wouldn’t have to supplement time-consuming walking with a cardio component; and I wouldn’t have to get to a class or schedule it at all. I could hop on a treadmill at the gym, or on decent-weather days, just walk outside my door and start running.
Problem: I hated running. That’s why, at 40, I found myself with no history of doing it. But I pretty much hated all exercise, so I decided that swapping the Stairmaster and walking for a shorter run was a pretty good deal.
Getting Into the Habit
Experimenting on the treadmill, I found that two 11-minute miles seemed to challenge me, and then I’d walk the remaining eight minutes to round up to a half-hour. Once I made the decision, I started running every day. It was my new habit, and I became obsessive enough that for years I missed very few days.
I’m 71 now—I know, I’m shockingly old—and still running. I run three days a week and walk the other days. Along the way I started competing in Senior Games track and field, which gives me an additional reason to keep up my running training. By the way, I still hate running. I don’t know what a runner’s high feels like; running doesn’t make me feel anything but exhausted. I do it for health and because I like being a senior athlete, something I never thought I could be.
What I want you to know about my running is that I never set a goal. I started a habit I didn’t even like, and it’s lasted more than 30 years. I started running two miles at a time daily or near daily, 30 years later I’m still running two miles several times a week, and in between then and now I never tried to get better. I didn’t set goals to improve or establish benchmarks to increase my speed and stretch my endurance. I just kept at it, status quo, same old same old.
Goal-setting Invites Disappointment
I know the idea is to start out with an 11-minute mile and try to inch it down until you hit some seemingly satisfying goal. If I increase my speed by five seconds a week…. That kind of thing. Where would that have led me?
I may have reached some loftyish goal, such as running an 8-minute mile. Then what would happen? Would I set yet another goal until I vowed to run two miles in zero minutes? Or add another mile at a time until I was spending more time than I wanted?
Aging is a formidable adversary of physical activity, so eventually I was going to be disappointed. Maybe I’d achieve a 10-minute mile but never get as good as the 8-minute-mile goal. Or I might not have been able to improve at all, which really would have felt like failing. Aging forces you to do just the opposite of goal-setting—become resigned to losing speed, strength and endurance.
Letting go of goal-setting gives me freedom from all of that. It means I’m never disappointed, I don’t get discouraged, and I don’t feel like a failure. These days I run more like a 12-minute mile, and the whole thing takes 24 minutes instead of 22 minutes. And you know what? At 71 I’m pretty happy with that outcome.
That’s my lesson to you in writing your memoir. Look, people who do well at setting goals should use that skill in writing their memoir. If you’re hitting your chapter-a-month goal, don’t fix what’s not broken. But if you feel that you’re letting yourself down as you’re writing your memoir, if progressing at a snail’s pace makes you feel like a failure, let’s remove that burden for you.
Tips for a Memoir Writing Habit
Islands of Brilliance, dedicated to addressing learning needs of neurodivergent minds, has a good lesson for anyone looking to extinguish goal-setting: “Motivation comes and goes. A habit, by definition, is something that you do reliably.”
So form habits! What habits can you form that will help you stick with writing your memoir?
- Set up the mechanics, the when and where. Figure out the most convenient days, since writing doesn’t have to happen every day but should come around more than once a week. Determine what time of day works best for you. Figure out where you’re most comfortable and will be least disturbed. None of this is a new idea, but if you haven’t seriously tried putting writing into your schedule, give it a shot.
- The first time you miss your day and time, or if you have to cut the time period short, don’t worry about it. But also don’t view it as the end of the writing habit. Maybe three months ago you scheduled a doctor’s appointment that conflicts with your writing time. Try to find a substitute slot in your day or week to take its place. Perhaps you decide to write during your train commute to your job just on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and one Tuesday a friend spots you and sits with you, so you end up in conversation instead of in deep writing thought. Don’t beat yourself up, but do shift that week to Wednesday and Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. Or let’s say you take a two-week trip. It can be anything from visiting relatives to touring Europe; either way you don’t have to accommodate your writing habit. Lots of habits will change during those two weeks. You won’t be cooking dinner at home or going to get the mail or watching your favorite shows from your favorite spot on the couch. When you arrive back home, you’ll go back to all of that, so also go back to your writing habit.
- The first time a potential conflict occurs, nip it in the bud. Back to the example of talking to your friend during your commute instead of doing your writing habit as planned, another option is to apologize to your friend but be honest as you open your laptop—“I’m really sorry, but I promised myself that I would use my commute time on Tuesdays to do some writing I’ve wanted to do.” Or let’s say you get a phone call, and you pick up because it’s someone, perhaps a parent, who could have an emergency. Once you’ve determined that it’s not urgent, explain about your writing habit and say you’ll call back. Unexpected things happen. You wake up with a fever or your power goes out or your cousin happens to be in town just for the day. The key is that if you interrupt your habit, go back to it as quickly as possible.
- Try stacking a second habit onto your writing habit. One obvious example of habit pairing is pouring your coffee and bringing it directly to your computer to start writing. If you decide to write first thing in the morning, this can work. If not, maybe you like a mid-afternoon snack and you can eat that while you’re writing. Or the first habit can be dropping your child off at some after-school sports practice and then you come right home and spend that time writing, however long it lasts. If you wait in the parking lot, you have your laptop and that hour becomes your writing time. Maybe there are a few days in the week that have no TV shows you watch right after dinner, so the habit stacking is that first you clean up the dishes, and then you grab coffee or dessert and go to your computer. You can reverse-stack habits as well. Maybe you don’t get lunch until after you’ve completed your writing time. Or you’ve taped your favorite show, but you must write first. Then the habit leads to a reward.
- Don’t be afraid to be quirky. Sometimes we have to kind of trick ourselves. Maybe once you’re dressed on Saturday, you start thinking about all the errands you need to run. If staying in your pajamas keeps you in the cozy mindset of remembering your life stories, don’t get dressed until you’ve put in the writing time you’ve allotted. Or if you need all the blinds down to give you privacy, set drawing the shades as part of your habit.
- Stay open to tweaking. If you find that the window of time doesn’t work out as well as you’d hoped, try a different day or time. If you wanted to work at the dining room table but you realize it’s too noisy, set yourself up in a bedroom or basement. A habit can change over time.
When you finish your memoir, your writing habit may be so ingrained that you continue and write other books, some poems or a diary. Or you use that time to start a project unrelated to writing. At first, you’ll probably fill the time slot with looking for an agent or publisher or working on self-publishing. But when your book is published, if you do stop the writing habit altogether, it will feel nothing like failing to reach a goal. It’s not disappointment; it’s just that your habit ended.