8 Practical Blog Posts to Improve Your Writing Life and Productivity

Over my nearly twenty years as a writer (I started young!), I’ve found that good writing habits are absolutely essential to consistently producing words.

That seems like an obvious thing when you read it, but how many of us writers can say that we’ve perfectly curated our writing ritual, and that there’s no room for improvement whatsoever? Like I said, I’ve been writing for nearly two decades, and I’m always looking for ways to upgrade my process.

Today, I’ve rounded up eight of my blog posts from the Writer’s Atelier archives (plus a few from this blog!) to help you do just that.

(Speaking of archives, if you want to see the other parts of the series, you can find them here!)

Your Digital Workspace

This is Your Sign to Organize Your Writing Resources (Plus 4 Free Platforms to Help You Do It)

Read this if you need a digital home for all those resources you’ve hunted and gathered over the years. And I’m not just talking about all the research and outlines and character notes you need easy access to while working on a WIP! There’s all kinds of information I have linked in my own personal writing resource database—handy blog posts, resourceful sites, templates, and so on—and every time I navigate to it, I’m thankful I’ve taken the time to compile it in one place. It’s worth the time investment.

If you like that post, try this blog post about organizing writing resources after a conference or summit.

Where Else to Track & Chart Your Daily Word Count (+ Free Spreadsheet)

Read this if you were bummed that the NaNoWriMo website was not around this year for tracking your word count during November’s novel-writing craze. You weren’t alone. Luckily, this blog post comes to the rescue with eight other ways to track and chart your word count all year long.

Your Analog Workspace

8 Unique Ways Writers Can Fill Their Empty Notebooks

Read this if you have a shelf or a rolling cart of empty notebooks you’ve bought or been gifted, and this is the year you’re finally going to start filling them up. Life is short! And writing things down improves cognition and memory.

I also wrote a sister blog post for readers on this very blog! If those tickle your fancy, you might also be interested in exploring the Ugly Notebook Theory.

How to Track Your Writing Sessions: The Analog Way

Read this if you like the benefits—or even just the aesthetic—of tracking your writing using pen and paper instead of a website that could crash or disappear off the face of the internet without warning. The tools being a given, this blog post also lists helpful metrics to track depending on what you’re trying to measure about your work.

Your Physical Workspace

8 Things Writers Should Do When They Move

Read this if you’re considering a move this year or next. I wrote this blog post around the time I moved from Florida to New Jersey in 2024 (which you can read more about here) as a way to clarify my thoughts about my own future writing life as my partner Logan and I made this life-altering change. Moving is hard, and if this post in some way helps you during your move, I’ll consider my job done.

How to Schedule Your Own Mini Writing Retreat

Read this if you need a good writing day. Writing retreats are often expensive, gatekept, or events you only hear about a week after they happened, when everyone’s posting their FOMO-inducing photos on social media. This post breaks down how to plan your own on a budget and on your time.

This is Your Sign to Organize Your Writing Space

Read this if you’ve been meaning to decorate your office anyway, but haven’t gotten around to it. We’re going for form and function. A good-looking space may work well to encourage you to sit down in the first place, but an organized space where everything you need is easy to reach for will encourage you to stay and enter a flow state.

Pick a Writing Uniform and Get Focused

Read this if you generally write and work from home. You’ve already heard from other psychology and productivity experts that getting dressed for the day can help you shift into a better headspace for getting things done. This takes that concept one step further by inviting you to select a special garment or accessory that signals to your brain (and potentially others around you) that you’re in the writing zone.