During the last six months of my life, I have learned one simple truth which has set me free as a writer. “Writers Write.” On the surface this may not seem like a profound statement but the power of those two words has completely changed my thought process and production as a writer.

For the previous three years I have had a story within me waiting to be told. Sometimes I would attempt to write it when I felt inspired or if a convenient block of time opened up with nothing to interrupt my creative process.

I became frustrated and puzzled as to how I was able to write articles, ad copy, press releases, storyboards and blogs for my job and complete them on time, but could only manage a few thousand words in three years for what I believed to be a great story.

I had always accomplished writing for work with timeframes and deadlines. I did not have the luxury of waiting for inspiration or a perfect writing environment. The writing demanded time and place and was not connected to variables out of my control.

Key Yessaad, real estate trainer, coach and friend was able to point out the obvious problem I could not see. He told me my story would never be written if I waited for the right time, place and inspiration to write it. “Writers Write,” means writers write when they have nothing to say, they write when not inspired, they write when they do not feel like writing and they write every day.

There is nothing magical or easy about applying the concept of “Writers Write.” I followed Key’s advice and began the process of writing daily but did not initially schedule the writing. After a few weeks I found not having a scheduled, protected time to write allowed life’s problems and obligations an opening to encroach and steal away time I had planned to use for writing.

Finding arbitrary times during the day had not worked, so I scheduled early morning as my time to write. I would wake up, sit down at my writing desk and try to put words to paper. There were many mornings where the blank page would stare back at me and my internal critic would tell me to go back to bed, you have nothing to say. I pushed through and established the habit with encouragement from Key who told me to trust in the process.

At the same time I applied scheduled writing, I also began to write longhand. I have an internal editor who is looking at each sentence to see if there is a better way to structure it. It was too easy for me to make changes on a computer and my editor’s obsession interrupted my flow. Key suggested I write longhand in an effort to quiet the editor. After a little practice words streamed from my pen and I was able to switch focus to just telling my story.

There have been other important tweaks to my process suggested by Key, such as not to write sequentially and to have good organizational systems in place to capture ideas when and where they occur.

Today, I have a comprehensive outline of my book, a rough draft with 9 out of 15 scenes completed and over 175 pages of hand-written text. My goal is to have a completed rough draft by mid-October and a completed book by early 2017.