Habit Stacking for Writers: How to Build a Sustainable Writing Practice Without Forcing It

Every writer has heard the advice: establish a writing routine. Write every day at the same time. Build a daily writing habit like clockwork. But what happens when that clockwork routine starts to feel more like a prison than a practice?

The truth is, building a sustainable writing practice isn't about finding the perfect routine and sticking to it forever. It's about creating flexible systems that adapt when life changes, knowing when to shake things up before staleness sets in, and having backup plans when your main routine fails.

When Your Routine Gets Stale

There's a struggle that gets talked about all the time in books like James Clear’s Atomic Habits—how to create habits. But there's a corollary problem that people don't really talk about: what happens when your habits start to feel stale and your creative practice starts to feel stale along with them?

A writer recently shared that writing in a busy airport for an hour by hand produced a thousand pretty good words. Much better than typical sessions in a quiet home office. Writing by hand in public has this scrappy performative energy to it, forces courage and momentum.

I remember working with a client who was feeling quite stuck. This was a person who was very consistent, very disciplined, and had come into a writer's block, a rut. I recommended going out to a cafe with a little notebook. And it was a huge help to her. She resisted it at first, thought I was being silly. Then she tried it and she wrote poems and that was very fun and strange. We did that for a few months and eventually it turned into her returning to her novel draft, which was the whole point.

Finding Your Fail-Safes

This is where habit stacking—building new behaviors onto existing anchors—becomes essential for writers.

I generally write in the cafe in the morning. That's my normal routine. If I can't get to the cafe or I'm struggling with a section, my first fail safe is writing at night at a bar.

If someplace other than your usual haunt really worked for you and you're feeling stale at home, try the cafe. It might not work—you might produce a hundred words that feel labored where you usually do 500. But those 100 words might not actually be bad when you go back and look at them. They just feel different in the moment, and different generally feels uncomfortable when we first encounter it.

Adapting to Life's Circumstances

Often circumstances force me to change. I love routine, but I've also created an environment in my life where routine is effectively impossible most of the time.

I'm a person who's moved a lot. Moving requires that you change things up, like where you work. But I do try to keep one or two things consistent. One of those things over the years has been trying to write first thing in the morning. Now, currently, that's not possible. So I move over into the evening. The afternoon is really bad for my brain.

I change up the time, which interestingly changes the texture of the writing. My night pages feel very different from my morning pages.

I do a consistent evaluation of what my day-to-day life looks like so that I can make choices in the most informed way. I assess my own living habits so that I can fit writing in rather than forcing myself to do something that doesn't suit my circumstances. It's important to be flexible and not stick to these isms about how writing works—that everybody needs to write 500 words at five in the morning every day. That's kind of nonsense.

Building Habits on Existing Anchors

I intentionally evaluate my day-to-day life because there is a pattern somewhere there. I try to find a way to have a consistent practice within existing things. BJ Fogg studied habits out of Stanford and had a newsletter called Tiny Habits about creating little anchors and building new habits on existing anchors.

One example he used was about flossing and how you tie flossing to after or before you brush your teeth. You don't just assume you're gonna start flossing. You tie it to something. Writing works the same way. You don't decide, I'm going to start writing because I want to. You tie it to something so that it can naturally work its way into your existing life.

Enter: habit stacking.

You might always be writing in a journal longhand, whether or not this writing is used in your project. Keeping in touch with the process of writing on paper. Later you can go back and reference that material if you think it'll be helpful.

Experimenting with the Process Machine

These aren't just writing productivity tips about squeezing more words out of your day. They're about building creative writing habits that actually last.

Don't limit yourself to just experimenting with location. If you're usually working on a computer, try printing off what you're working on and working on paper. Change the lighting in your room. Try writing with music in your headphones instead of silence.

Switching up small elements shows you how your writing process is really a machine you're refining. Try to be less precious with your routines and experiment with them.

The Routine That Bends, Not Breaks

Building a writing routine that actually works is less about discipline and more about design. When you understand habit chaining—tying your writing practice to existing anchors in your day—you stop relying on willpower alone. When you give yourself permission to have multiple routines, fail-safes for when circumstances shift, you build resilience into your practice.

The goal isn't to write at the same time in the same place forever. The goal is to keep writing, even when everything else changes. Sustainable writing practice is about adaptability.

At Hewes House, we work with writers to build creative writing habits that flex with life rather than fighting against it. Because the best writing routine is the one you'll actually maintain.