Just like anything important to you, your writing needs space within your life.

Here, I’m not talking about space on your calendar—though of course that’s important too.

Your writing needs actual physical space.

Plenty of people dedicate a serious amount of space in their homes to an interest or hobby. Some people have entire craft rooms stocked with yarns and fabrics. Others have a garage jam-packed with sports equipment. Some have kitchen cupboards full of cake pans and baking accessories.

Your writing might well take place on a computer (or even on your phone) … but you still need more than just virtual space.

You need a quiet place in your home where you can write. You might also want to have notebooks, pens, inspiring photos, or useful books to hand. You’ll need a chair you can sit on comfortably while you’re writing.

It’s also important to choose a space where you feel as safe as possible. I hate to be overlooked when I’m writing—so I write with my back to the wall, facing into the room. I thought this was just my own weird quirk, but I’ve since learned that it’s a very normal psychological need.

Whatever type of writing you do, it’s going to be hard to build the momentum you need in order to develop as a writer if you aren’t writing regularly. That means you need to develop a writing habit.

To start with, you don’t necessarily need to commit to a big project. In fact, even if you have a big project on the go, you may want to build a writing habit that also incorporates practice and experimentation.

For instance, you might decide to spend 5-10 minutes each day simply writing anything that comes to mind. This can get you into the habit of writing, without the pressure that comes with setting goals like “I’ll write eight chapters a month” or “I’ll publish a blog post every week.”

You could use creative writing prompts or journal prompts for your daily writing (if you’re not keen on traditional writing prompts, there are some great alternative suggestions here). If you want to stretch yourself with something bigger, you could gradually build up a longer piece, paragraph by paragraph, day after day.

If you’ve been writing consistently, perhaps for years, you may feel that you’ve ended up in a bit of a writing rut. Perhaps you only ever write in one genre, for instance. Maybe you use the same familiar tropes or character archetypes in almost all your novels, or your short stories are all structured in the same way.

Growth is about trying new things. Even if you try a new genre or style and decide it’s not for you, you’ll still have learned something in the process.

You could experiment with:

• Writing in a different genre. Perhaps you’ve only written speculative fiction so far, but you’d like to try your hand at romance … or vice versa.
• Writing in a different style. Maybe you love fast-moving action, but you want to have a go writing something much more slow-paced, centering on a character’s thoughts and emotions.
• Writing using a different viewpoint and/or tense. If you normally use, say, third-person past tense, you could switch to first-person present tense.
• Using a different structure. If all your stories so far have involved a single first-person narrator, how about splitting your narrative between two narrators?

Short stories are a great place to try something new. I particularly like short story competitions for this: using an unusual style or format for your piece can help you stand out, and even if your experiment doesn’t quite work, you’ve only committed a relatively small amount of writing time to it.

Receiving feedback on your writing is such an important way to develop as a writer … though I know how daunting it can be. The first time I read out a piece of my writing in front of a writers’ group, my knees were shaking.

Direct feedback on your work will help you to gain a better understanding of your craft, both on a big-picture and detailed level. You can get this kind of feedback within a writing workshop group or writers’ club, from a beta reader, or via a paid critique.

On the big picture level, you might get feedback about things like these:

• A character who readers find unsympathetic or who seems one-dimensional.
• Plot events that don’t quite hang together.
• Scenes where your pacing is too fast or too slow.

On a detailed level, beta readers and fellow writers can help with things like these:

What Next?

How can you take your next steps to grow as a writer—even if you feel stuck and scared?

This is such a common struggle that I wrote a short ebook about it called The Courageous Writer: How to Grow in Confidence and Nurture Your Creativity.

When I talk to writers, a lack of confidence is the one thing that helps many of them back from the growth and development they want to achieve.

One of the things I talk about in that ebook is breaking challenging (or scary!) writing tasks into small pieces.

Perhaps one of the ideas above, such as entering a short story competition sounds overwhelming right now.

Here’s how you could take little, manageable steps toward it:

1. Look up a list of short story competitions you could enter (no commitment!)
2. Choose one competition with a topic or structure that appeals to you.
3. Spend 10 minutes using that competition idea as a brainstorming prompt. What ideas arise from it? What stories could you tell? (Again, no commitment!)
4. Pick one story idea to develop further. What characters could come into the story? Is there a little snippet of dialogue or action already in your head? Write it down.

… and so on.

Step by step, you can build your way up to a finished story. Each small step might feel a bit daunting at first, but if any step feels too daunting, just break it down even more.

Soon, you’ll have reached a new milestone on your writing journey—and you’ll be ready to tackle the next one.

With each step along the way, you’ll grow as a writer and developing your skills.

Ali Luke writes at Aliventures.com about making the most of your writing time, with tips on staying focused, motivated, and on track. For practical ways to become more confident and creative, download her free mini-ebook The Courageous Writer: How to Grow in Confidence and Nurture Your Creativity.

Featured Photo by Daniel Öberg on Unsplash