This is K.M. Island.

and you are listening to the 464th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

When people ask me my top bit of advice for writers, more often than not at some variation of write every day.

By this, I don't necessarily mean literally write every day,

but rather just that it's important to establish a regular writing routine and stick with it.

My personal routine is actually write five days a week or evenings as the case may be.

I have stuck with this religiously for the last 15 years or so and I can

attest how much difference this consistency makes a

a few hours sometimes just one but just the regularity of showing up in the story space every day or nearly every day

makes a huge difference not just in maintaining

good habits and meeting goals but also in maintaining a healthy relationship

with my

Creativity when I don't show up for whatever reason I almost always notice the difference I find myself more reluctant to sit down at all and what I do it's harder to get back in the flow which come to think of it is probably the reason for the initial reluctance.

All of this is to say once again, right, I don't believe the amount of time you spend

writing every day is nearly as important as the fact that you're showing up every

day. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this

week's podcast How to Use Your Outline when writing The First Draft. Outlining your novel is one thing.

Whether you prefer to outline with minimalism, maximum, or hindsight, that is in revisions,

a surprisingly easily stumbling block can then be that of

figuring out how to use your outline in the first draft. Recently I received an email from Matt Powers which made me realize that out of all

of the dozens of posts and podcasts I've done about outlining I've never actually talked about how to use your outline when writing the first draft.

Matt wrote, I've read several of your books as well as too many blog posts to count and I don't think I've seen this

...