Fingers hit keys like sneakers on asphalt. The words race from your fingertips. The blank white page of death is no more. All the training and preparation is paying off! Before long, you have a few thousand words logged away. Nothing can stop you now.

So what happened? Three weeks ago the project wrote itself. You were meeting every checkpoint on schedule. Now your peers pass you by the minute. You keep plodding along but you’re tired. Is it this hard for everyone?

Finishing projects, especially long creative projects, pushes against the void of the status quo. To quote John Mulaney, “Percentage wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them, and so much fun not to do them—especially when you were supposed to do them. In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.” Adult life calls more often than not, procrastination feels better than working (in the short term), and the energy you had at the beginning is a distant memory. Even on your best days, someone’s liable to pop in for a chat or invite you to dinner. It’s just this once, right?

As writers, the “no, I must exercise restraint” muscle must be honed. Cheat days be damned, the work must continue! Here is a short list of how I aim to finish the marathon.

1. Positive Consistency – Try using a simple reward everyday you achieve your goal. I use a set of cute stamps on a calendar to commemorate a good day. This encourages me to never miss a day and doesn’t make me feel like I’ve over-rewarded myself on days where I wasn’t able to get much done, despite my best efforts.
2. Protect your creative side – You’ve got your grocery shopping, work projects, the button popped off your shirt, and the sink at home is scary enough to inspire folklore. Instead of going over your to-do list in your head, try keeping it written down. Keep your mind unburdened while cleaning by working without music or podcasts. Try using the time as a meditation for your future. Allow yourself to dream, even during the mundane.
3. Make your schedule self-reinforcing – I get invested in projects. A lot. It’s a lot of energy to maintain over the course of years which is discouraging. Instead of front-loading the project by binging on one task, set a wide variety of tasks in your routine. Include time everyday for creatively rejuvenating tasks like reading or working on a one-off project. Instead of zoning-out watching Netflix, play a video game with an engrossing story to keep your mind active. Listen to writing podcasts (preferably some with some humor). You can also set aside time for more critical work like planning and researching. By pacing yourself and varying your tasks from the get-go, you can maintain a healthy pace that won’t leave you wracked with guilt when you miss a day. And if you don’t have a fixed schedule, try thinking instead of necessary events in your day that you can use as reminders or “triggers” for your tasks. If you take public transit, use your daily commute as a “trigger” for your research time. If you know you’ll always be alone at home from 9 to 11, use that as your sign for dedicated writing.
4. Less than 5 minutes? Do it! Don’t get bogged down by size of a to-do list–set aside some time to knock out quick tasks all at once for a boost of energy and a more manageable day. So often we stress about how much time we think something will take, we paralyze ourselves into wasting the amount of time it would have taken to do it straight away. You have permission to take 5 minutes to get it off your plate.
5. Limit your portions – If you’re like me, you always bite off more than you can chew. You think, “that won’t take long!” but soon it’s 1 AM and you have a meeting at 7 AM tomorrow and you can’t live with less than 8 hours of sleep. Instead of bolting out from the starting gate, set yourself the goal of achieving the minimum viable product each day rather than the full release. For me, this meant breaking myself of the revise-by-chapter method in favor of the revise-by-scene method. This allows me to take smaller chunks of time during the day to get some work done rather than waiting so I can work for hours all at once.
6. Go with the flow – If you’re not feeling your scheduled goal, don’t force it! If you’re feeling inspired, let yourself go where you are called. You’ll be happier for it.
7. Own yourself – “A writer writes.” If you can claim the task of writing, you are a writer. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone but yourself. If you are writing–no asterisk, no caveat, no gatekeeping–you are a writer. Write it down where you can see it (I have it in my Twitter bio) and believe yourself. You’ve got this.