Tip 6: Change Your Medium

Picture this: You’re travelling and staying the night in a hotel somewhere. You had a wonderfully fun day, but the night is closing in. You haven’t written yet. And you forgot your laptop. Crap. Now what? It’s time for tip 6:

“Prepare different ways and mediums to write.”

Preparation is key, and giving yourself options is a great way to keep up a sustainable writing habit.

Give Yourself Options

If you’re doing the Daily 30, I’d advise giving yourself access to different mediums for writing, such as:

A computer for the standard writing and work on bigger projects
A notebook for jotting down thought and trying out new ideas
A phone for writing on the go (Notes app or a dedicated app)

That way, no matter where you are, you always have a suitable way to write for thirty minutes.

This fail-safe has saved my writing streak on multiple occasions over the years. Some days, I’ll be travelling pretty much all day. Can I take my laptop? Will I have the space to set it up and access my documents? Can I take pen and paper with me instead?

At some point, I installed the Word app on my phone and made sure I could access all of my projects anytime, anywhere, so I could type away on my phone, too. I’m a fervent concert-attender, so this has been a saving grace in places where I couldn’t take anything but the absolute essentials.

Change of Scenery

Using different mediums for writing isn’t just convenient on the go. It can also help you break through writer’s block. A different medium truly makes you look at your story differently.

A few years ago, I was working on a project with multiple POVs – and I almost gave up on it. I just couldn’t figure out how I wanted a particular character’s storyline to go and what her role was going to be in the main story. But I knew she had to be in there.

I stared at my laptop screen for days, until I ended up in a café in London and decided to open my notebook to a blank page instead. I began writing out her thoughts, as if penning her diary. That’s when I came up with this character’s voice and, through that, her place in the world I’d already created. Now, she’s an unmissable part and perhaps even my favourite to write!

If you ever need a different perspective or feel stuck during your 30 minutes, try changing mediums and see what it brings you!

Bonus Backups

One of the unexpected extras of ensuring you can access your writing in multiple places, is the backups! Every writer’s worst nightmare is losing all of their words due to some technological (or human) error – and having backups is a surefire way to avoid this tragedy.

Whether you’re storing all of your writing online so you can access it through multiple devices, or you’re personally emailing yourself an updated version of your document when you know you’re gonna need it, your work will be available in multiple places. If your computer happens to die, your writing perseveres!

Click Here for a Quick Tip!

If you use the Cloud (iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.), make sure to take some time every month or so to make a physical backup, too. This can be on a classic USB stick, a different computer, or a hard disk. This way, you’ll have access online as well as an offline storage just in case the worst happens.

Writing Prompt: Lost

Want to spend your Daily 30 today on something different? Let’s turn our writer nightmare into inspiration! Happy writing! (And please, back up your work!)

“It’s gone. Now what?”
Your character has lost something important.

Choose Your Fighters

A big advantage of pursuing writing as a hobby is that you don’t need much. Just some paper and a pen will do. But that doesn’t mean we have to stick with that.

Whether it’s to be able to write in different places or switch methods when you’re stuck, it’s useful to have different “writing fighters” at the ready. And, on top of that, you’ll have easy backups, too, so none of your writing will go lost.

There’s only one question left to answer now: How will you be writing today?

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Priscilla Kint