How To Restart A Writing Habit After Falling Off

I haven't written in weeks. I probably couldn't tell you how many days or weeks it's been. 

This would be the first article in a while. 

Not a blog post. Not a journal entry. Not even a half-decent social media caption. The cursor blinks at me like it's judging my life choices, and honestly? I don't blame it. 

It's safe to say my writing streak is over. 

You know what's worse than breaking a writing streak? The shame spiral that comes after. That voice that says you're not a real writer because real writers write every day, and you can't even manage to open a document without feeling like a fraud.

I know this feeling intimately because I've lived it repeatedly. 

I self-published a book that went absolutely nowhere. Not "modest success" nowhere; I mean crickets and tumbleweeds. My results were the digital equivalent of shouting into a void. 

After that failure, I stopped writing for months. Then I started again. Then I stopped. Then started. The cycle repeated so many times I lost count.

But here's what I've learned from falling off the wagon more times than I care to admit: restarting isn't the problem. 

The way we think about restarting is.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves

We treat falling off our writing habit like we've burned down the entire house. We think we need to rebuild from the foundation up, recommit with monk-like discipline, and somehow become a different person who doesn't struggle.

That's exhausting. No wonder we avoid starting again.

The truth? You don't need to become someone else. You just need to write one sentence. Not a good sentence. Not a viral sentence. Just any sentence that moves from your brain to the page.

I call it my "words on a page" goal. 

The 2-Minute Restart

When I finally figured out how to restart without the drama, I stole an idea from every productivity guru ever: make my writing goal so small it's almost embarrassing.

I created a very simple rule. Write for two minutes. 

That's it. No word count. No quality standard. Just two minutes of putting words down.

Some days, those two minutes turned into twenty. Other days, they stayed at two, and I closed my laptop feeling like I'd barely done anything. 

But here's the key that I found quite satisfying: I'd done something. The streak was alive. The identity of "person who writes" was reinforced.

You're not building a writing habit. You're building the habit of showing up.

And I know you've heard that before, but the proof is undeniable. 

Kill The Perfectionism Before It Kills You

Let me tell you about my failed book. I spent two years writing it. I agonised (lovingly, with all my soul, with everything I had, all my spare time poured into it) over every chapter, every sentence, and I was convinced that if I just made it good enough, people would care.

They didn't. No one cared; not even my loved ones. 

It's not because the book was terrible (it's actually pretty good from the few people who've read it), but because I'd focused all my energy on the writing and zero energy on everything else that matters.

I forgot about building an audience, understanding how to market a book in a saturated and fickle market, and creating something that solved a problem for someone other than me.

I became obsessed with perfection, with the writing, over anything else. 

When you're restarting your writing habit, perfectionism is your enemy. It's the voice that says, "If you can't write something amazing, don't write at all." 

That voice is lying to you. Bad writing can be edited. No writing can't.

Your first draft after a break will probably suck. Write it anyway. Give yourself permission to be terrible. You can't edit a blank page, but you can absolutely fix a messy one.

Use Your Failure As Fuel

The most valuable thing I got from my self-publishing disaster wasn't sales or validation. 

It was the material.

Every mistake I made, every delusional assumption, every moment of crushing disappointment, I view as content gold. 

People online don't connect with your highlight reel. They connect with the moments you wanted to quit and didn't, or the moments you did quit and had to claw your way back.

If you've fallen off your writing habit, you now have a story about falling off and getting back on. That's more valuable than a story about someone who never struggled. 

Write about it (just like I'm doing). 

Someone out there is in the exact same place, feeling the exact same shame, and your words might be the permission they need to start again.

The Restart Checklist

So, in the spirit of not writing entirely to feed my own ego, I want to make sure I leave some practical wisdom. 

Here's what actually works when you're staring down a blank page after weeks (or months) of silence:

Lower the bar so far it's on the ground. Don't commit to 1,000 words per day or in one writing session or even a week. Commit to one paragraph. One sentence. Opening the document counts as a win.

Schedule it like a doctor's appointment. You don't skip a doctor's appointment because your motivation is low. Treat your writing time the same way. Put it in your calendar. Show up even when (especially when) you don't feel like it.

Remove the friction. Keep your laptop open to a blank document. Have a "bad ideas" folder where you dump thoughts without judgment. Maybe don't even call it that; just "Ideas". Make it easier to start writing than to avoid it. Try to be kind on yourself, though. 

Forgive yourself faster. Missed yesterday? Okay. Missed last week? Also okay. The only unforgivable thing is using past failure as an excuse to give up entirely. Start now. Not tomorrow. Start now (apologies, but a little repetition can't hurt). 

Track showing up, not output. Mark an X on your calendar when you write, even if what you wrote was garbage. The streak isn't about quality. It's about reinforcing that you're a person who writes.

Start Ugly

The biggest revelation from my failed book wasn't that I'm a bad writer (though imposter syndrome still whispers that sometimes). It was that I was waiting for permission to be good enough, smart enough and experienced enough to deserve success.

No one's giving you that permission. You have to take it.

Your writing doesn't need to be good today. It needs to exist. The improvement comes from repetition and not from waiting until you magically become better before you start.

So if you've fallen off your writing habit, here's what you do: 

You write one bad sentence. 

Then another. 

Then maybe a slightly less bad paragraph. 

You show up tomorrow and do it again, even if today's writing was complete garbage.

You restart by starting. Not by planning to start, not by feeling motivated to start, but by opening the document and putting words on a page.

Everything else is just noise.

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I write about the emotional and practical reality of being a writer - drafting, doubt, discipline, and publishing while still figuring it out.

Mostly for people who write because they have to, need to, want to | https://linktr.ee/ellenfranceswrites