Writing changes you. Below is a brief list of habits I developed over the years of writing Memory’s Lens. They work for me, and have helped other parts of my life too. They may work for you. I share them and invite you to share your own writing habits.

1 Draft Overflow:
I don’t actually delete anything. I have a separate document called Draft Overflow. When I am working in my manuscript and need to cut something out, I simply copy-and-paste it into this Draft Overflow document. I can move past the apprehension of deleting it—plus I have it for later. Sometimes the dialogue in a scene can be applied to a different scene. Sometimes the phrasing in a sentence is beautiful, but just not needed in that part of the story. It goes without saying it’s difficult to delete your own work. Why else did you write it? But when a section, paragraph, or sentence doesn’t fit, I put it in Draft Overflow.

2 Freewrite and Tasks:
Whenever I get stuck I go to this separate document. In this space I can write whatever. Most of the time I write in my own voice. I play the part of my own interlocutor and the result is a list of questions. What has to happen in this scene? Why is does this take place at night? Why is Hanna on the roof? Answering these questions often yields a to-do list and a path forward. It also gives me a ready troubleshoot for any time I get stuck. I never feel trapped because I can go to this space and wrestle around until I can answer "Why am I stuck?"

3 First Draft Free
I always make my first draft of anything judgment-free. Our harshest critic is ourselves. When the words are forging ahead into the void you are doing the impossible: something from nothing. Even if what you write is not used in the end, it was still part of the journey. I would not be an author—and Memory’s Lens would not exist—if my first drafts were subject to my own judgment. So I shut it out. Just write. This can be hard to remember sometimes. But I’ve made it my habit. Because I trust in the next habit.

4 Magic in Revisions
Most of the story’s turns, dialogue choices, tone, and character development all come upon retrospection. They can’t happen without this. Often I will write a scene, then come back the next night and realize the scene had an opportunity to touch on two characters’ relationship. A slight revision of dialogue and character’s memory of another character is brought up. A slight change later and now her admiration of that character is evoked, and two chapters are now linked when before the scene just played out. I think of this like adding brush strokes to a painting.
I daydream a lot when I go jogging. Obviously you can’t write and jog at the same time (I think). Your subconscious does quite a bit of work. It goes without saying that a reader or editor can help tremendously with seeing these things. But long before an editor or beta reader reviews your work, the magic comes in your revisions. Your mind will work on it even when you’re not. You just have to come back to it and write it down.

5 Dot to Dot
I keep a map of the story’s trajectory. It’s a simple list of chapters and the main thing that happens in each. Each chapter notes which perspective it’s from and what characters appear. Your mileage may vary here depending on how you construct your story, but the point is to know where you’re going (kind of) when you write. There are the scenes you want to write. These are the dots. A document called Planning houses these dots. The manuscript then connects these dots and becomes a story. It surprises me how many impactful scenes came from bridges to the next dot. Connecting them is fun, and getting to a dot is, of course, the treat. But it’s important not to get lost in too many details or scenes. And that brings us to the next point.

6 Every Frame a Painting
If you can highlight a page, paragraph, sentence, or word, and the unhighlighted parts above and below logically connect, then delete the highlighted section. It’s simple, yet remarkable what you can see when you collapse a section by pulling out something in the middle. This is often easier for others to see, but I found I could start seeing it when I would test a chapter by highlighting a section and reading the narrative with that section removed. Always ask yourself if a chapter, a section, a scene—even a sentence, is a painting. Could you stop the story there and read just that sentence and it’s beautiful? I understand this is a film analogy (and a wonderful but no-longer-running YouTube channel), but I found it applies to writing fiction. Because what you write should be enjoyable to you. And hence my last habit.

7 Read
Read your own manuscript because you enjoy it. If you don’t, ask yourself why you wrote it. My fun is rereading my own manuscript and improving it. Opportunities to enhance the story spring up. Writing is a very engaging process. When I reread I am interacting with the text to literally change it. I see a chance to make the language stark and staccato. I take it. I see a chance to change the weather in a scene. I make it oppressively sunny and hot. It’s fun. These things only appear, though, upon rereading the manuscript (over and over and over). If you enjoy the final product even after all of those rereads, your readers will too. But the challenge and fun of creation, though, is all yours.
Read other works too. I am always reading from a long list of classics while I write. I find it improves my own writing and influences it. Read works from authors you admire and you will improve. You don’t have to read just classics. Reading will wake up your soul, and is so much better than not reading. You won’t realize it right away, but it will influence your own writing. If you don’t read, then your world will remain the same size—or worse: shrink.