My whole body ached and I couldn’t move; it felt like a bus had run me over. I had a fever of 102°F the morning my writing streak almost broke. When I finally woke up, the first thing I remembered was the promise I’d made to myself to write every day, so I picked up the pen and wrote one sentence: “This sucks, and I’m probably delirious, but it still counts, because I kept the promise to myself and wrote one sentence.” Then I put the pen and the notebook down and fell right back to dreamless sleep.
That morning is one day in three years of writing every day. When I count the streak, it counts the same as the mornings when the words came easily.
There are 54 days left in 2026 as I write this, which means 54 more chances to write one sentence and close the notebook.
Whenever someone tells me they broke a streak and feel like a failure, I think of a 2010 study by Phillippa Lally at University College London. Her team followed 96 people building a new daily habit, and missing a single day along the way didn’t materially change how the habit formed.
How to use this list. Do one a day, in any order, and put a mark next to the number when you finish. Most take ten minutes or less. The ones that ask you to picture a moment and write it in present tense are small Future Scripting™ : the practice I teach: “ you see the moment in your mind’s eye, write it with your pen as though it already happened, then act like the person on the page.” Your nervous system believes what you write in detail, so give it the light, the sounds, and what’s in your hands.
Before the house wakes up
Set tomorrow’s alarm ten minutes earlier. When it goes off, leave the phone where it is, sit somewhere with a pen, and write whatever is already in your head in the dark. Nobody will ever read it.
On the day you have nothing left, write one sentence and close the notebook.
Open the voice memo app and rant for two minutes about something that annoyed you this week. Transcribe it word for word, ums included. That’s what you sound like before you start editing yourself.
Pull a book off your own shelf, open it anywhere, and copy the last line on the page. Let it be your first line and keep going for ten minutes.
Close your eyes and picture tomorrow’s moment when you sit down to create. Where is the light coming from? What’s in your hand, and how does the chair feel? Write that scene in present tense, as if it’s happening right now. That’s a Future Script, and it takes about four minutes.
Write in the car. Give it ten minutes in a parking lot before work, before school pickup, or before the game starts. Parking lots are where I learned to write in stolen minutes.
Shuffle a deck of cards and decide what each suit stands for. Draw one card. The suit is your subject and the number tells you how many sentences to write.
Photograph one thing you would usually walk past, then write two lines about it that only you could write. Frost on the windshield counts.
The project in the drawer
Take the project out of the drawer and set it on the table where you’ll see it tomorrow morning. Let it sit there. Today, looking at it is the whole job.
Find the exact spot where you stopped. Write down the page number, the last sentence, and the file name. Knowing where you left off makes coming back feel a lot less like starting over.
Open it to the middle and start there. Rereading from page one is usually how the critic sneaks back in.
Write down, word for word, what your inner critic says about this project, and put it in quotation marks. Mine said “it isn’t good enough.” Underneath it was “I’m not good enough,” and it turned out those had been the same sentence all along.
Picture the finished project in your hands. Feel its weight, and hear the first person who reads it say something to you about it. Write that moment in present tense, with a date, as though it already happened. Then write down exactly what they say to you, in quotation marks. In my workshops, that’s the layer that turns a flat description into something people can feel.
Give it 20 minutes on your calendar this week, with a day and a time. Then write a plan B for the day everything falls apart, because one of them will.
List what you won’t add before it’s done. Tape the list inside the front cover so you see it every time you sit down to work on it.
Tell one person the project exists. You don’t have to show them a single page. If telling them terrifies you and excites you at the same time, take that as your sign.
Let one project go on purpose. Write it a short goodbye on a sticky note and throw the note away. Then notice how your shoulders feel.
The voices in your head
Catch a sentence you say about yourself that starts with “I’m just.” Mine was “Writers write, creators create, I just work.” Rewrite yours the way it’s actually true, and read it out loud once, even if your voice wobbles.
Go through your bio, your About page, or the way you introduce yourself, and cross out “by accident,” “lucky,” and “fell into.” Write what you actually did. I heard myself say “I’m a Montessorian by accident” to a room of directors who run international schools. Calling it an accident was my way of not owning it.
Notice the word “always” in a story you tell about someone you love. Replace it with one thing that actually happened, on one specific day.
Write the origin story you usually lead with. Underneath it, write the version that’s true today. For thirty years mine started with fifty dollars and a paper dictionary.
Next time someone asks what you do, add “and I’m a writer” (or a creator, or a painter) at the end. Notice what happens in your chest. Say it anyway.
Name a phrase you inherited that still makes decisions for you. Mine is co powiedzą ludzie, Polish for “what will people say.” I thought I left it at the airport when I was 21, and thirty years later I found it waiting for me at a Sunday dinner table.
When you catch yourself worrying, remember that worry is rehearsal. Write the worry as a scene, then write the scene you’d rather your brain practice, with just as much detail.
Write a thank you note to a past version of you who was running on empty and kept going anyway. Thank that person for not giving up, even if you know how hard the next stretch got.
Asking for help and letting people in
Stick a Post-it with the name of one person you trust on your bathroom mirror. You’ll see it every morning while you brush your teeth.
Ask that person for one specific thing. If you love helping and hate asking, the way I do, this one will feel much worse than it actually is. When they say yes, let them help. Turning help down can take away the joy someone feels in giving it.
Message a friend you haven’t talked to in years and skip the long apology for the silence. A friend from Poland I hadn’t seen in twenty years called me one Sunday. He’d been dusting off his old CD collection, we picked up mid-conversation, and my Polish came right back.
Tell a writer whose work moved you this year which line did it, and where you were when you read it.
Picture one reader opening your next piece. See where they’re sitting and what’s in their hands, and notice the moment their shoulders drop because they feel understood. Write one paragraph to that person.
Send something unfinished to one person and ask them a single question about it.
Ask someone who knows you well what they would come to you for. Write down their exact words before you have a chance to argue with them.
Write down the names on your personal board of directors. Next to each name, write the last time you told them what they mean to you.
Thank someone who believed in you early. My first paid subscriber was Bob. I was sitting on the swing in my garden when the notification came, and I broke down crying. Tell your Bob what it meant.
Money and what your work is worth
Write the price you’d charge if you weren’t scared. Next to it, write the one you actually charge. Sit with the gap for a minute without trying to fix it.
Type the higher number into a proposal or your offer page and leave it there overnight. I once typed $2,000, deleted it for $1,000 twice, and finally sent the $2,000. The yes came within hours.
See yourself sending an invoice for that higher number. Notice your hands, your breathing, the click of the send button. Then write it in present tense, starting with “I send the invoice and I feel...” and finish the sentence.
List one thing you keep giving away for free. If you’ve given it away three times, it might be a product.
Go through your archive and write down the questions readers keep asking you. Circle the one you could answer half asleep.
Describe what you make in one sentence that nobody else could have written. If a stranger could have written it, try again.
The room you create in
Clear one surface where you create. Wipe it down and put back only what you’ll use tomorrow morning.
Leave your notebook and pen where your phone usually sits at night, so they’re the first thing your hand finds in the morning.
Find one “I need to” on your to-do list and rewrite it as “I get to.” Read both versions out loud and notice which one your shoulders like better.
Write one sentence on your bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker, in present tense, about the person you are becoming. Read it every morning through December 31.
Put twenty minutes on your calendar every day this week and call the meeting VIP. If a coworker asks, it stands for very important person, which happens to be true.
Go for a walk with no destination and no podcast, and when you get home, write down one sound you would have missed with earbuds in.
Do one small thing you would normally wait for someone else to do with you, like the morning walk, the movie, or the coffee shop. Go alone. Write down how it felt in your body, before and after.
Rehearsing 2027 before it gets here
List everything you finished in 2026, however small. Keep going past the point where it feels silly.
Make a list of who you want to be in 2027, one word at a time, with no plan next to any of them. Once a word is on paper, your brain starts noticing ways to get there before you’ve worked out how.
Choose one experiment for 2027 and the one variable you’ll change. When I almost quit Substack in March 2025, changing one thing at a time is what kept me going.
Spend three minutes emptying your head onto paper first, groceries and laundry included. Then close your eyes and see December 31, 2027. Where are you standing? What’s on the table, what can you smell, and who is in the room with you? Stay there for a full minute before you open your eyes.
Now write it with your pen, in present tense, as though it already happened. Start with “It’s December 31, 2027, and I...” and keep the pen moving for seven minutes.
Pick one sentence from that page and do one small thing this week that the person in it would do. Put it on your calendar today.
On December 31, 2026, read back through every mark on this list and count them. Write that number on the first page of your 2027 notebook.
By December 31 you’ll have a page with marks on it. A few will be for big days, and plenty will be for one sentence written at the kitchen table with your coat still on. I count those exactly the way I count the fever morning.
If you’d like company for the rest of these 54 days, everything from my Writing Lab lives in one place, including the protocols I use to finish a project and publish it while my inner critic is still talking. Start with Writing Lab 101 here.
P.S. Tell me in the comments which number you’re starting with today. I’m starting with number 27.
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