Observed writing habits advice
Writivism winner @_Damilola_O recommended practical routines for writers — watch your surroundings for ideas, avoid editing mid-draft, write daily, and listen to craft podcasts such as David Perell’s 'How I Write' for sustained learning. Those are small behavioral shifts that consistently improve output and voice over time. (x.com)
A prize-winning poet boiled better writing down to four habits, and none of them require a retreat, a Master of Fine Arts degree, or eight free hours before breakfast. Damilola Omotoyinbo, who won the 2023 Writivism Poetry Prize, told writers to observe their surroundings, stop editing while drafting, write every day, and keep learning from craft conversations like David Perell’s “How I Write.” (writivism.org) (x.com) (podcasts.apple.com) That advice landed because Omotoyinbo is not speaking from theory alone. Writivism announced on April 28, 2024, that she won its 2023 Poetry Prize for “The Evening News,” and interviews published afterward describe her as a Nigerian creative writer and software engineer building work across poetry and prose. (writivism.org) (sevhage.com) The first habit was simple: pay attention to ordinary life until it stops looking ordinary. In practice, that means buses, family arguments, street vendors, office small talk, and overheard lines become raw material instead of background noise. (x.com) The second habit was to stop editing in the middle of a first draft. That separates drafting from polishing, which matches the standard writing process taught in composition guides that break the work into drafting first and revising later. (x.com) (scribbr.com) That sounds small until you watch what mid-draft editing does. A writer who keeps fixing sentence three never reaches sentence thirty, and a writer who reaches the end has something concrete to revise instead of a blank page with perfect commas. (x.com) (scribbr.com) The third habit was daily writing, which is less romantic than waiting for inspiration and more like training for a race. Studies of routines are messy, but writing guides and long-running craft coverage keep returning to the same pattern: repetition lowers the friction of starting. (x.com) (jamesclear.com) (masterclass.com) The fourth habit was to keep feeding the mind while away from the page. Perell’s “How I Write” podcast is built around interviews with writers about process, tools, and revision, so the lesson is not “copy this person’s schedule” but “borrow one useful method and test it tomorrow.” (x.com) (podcasts.apple.com) Put together, the routine is almost aggressively unglamorous: notice more, draft forward, show up daily, and study people who already do the work well. That is probably why the advice travels so well across poetry, essays, fiction, and newsletters: each habit is cheap, repeatable, and hard to fake. (x.com) (sevhage.com)
