Welcome back to Stupid Advice Saturday! In this final week of Nanowrimo, we’re going to eviscerate a piece of purported wisdom you’ve had crammed down your throat a lot lately, and that is to write every day. Bold words from someone who has spent the last 25 days encouraging you to write 1,667 words per day, I know. But hear me out.

The question is this: looking back on the last 25 days, as well as ahead to the next 5, how sustainable do you feel the writing habit you’ve developed is? Do you feel the urge to continue writing 1,667 words per day after this challenge is over? How long do you think you could keep it up without hating it? Another month? A year? Five?

Or are you feeling, perhaps, a little burned out? If you are, I don’t blame you – I am! Nanowrimo is as exhausting as it is fun and beneficial, and there’s a reason it only lasts a month. And while one of those benefits is helping you build writing into your day as a regular habit, I think it’s a mistake to assume that means that habit needs to be “I will write more than 1,000 word per day, every single day, until the book is done.”

First of all, you shouldn’t think of the goal as “write every day.” If anything, a better way to phrase it is “dedicate time to your writing every day.” That doesn’t always mean putting brand new words down on a blank page. As you’ve probably noticed by now, there are a million different things that go into writing a book, and that means that “time dedicated to writing” can look a lot of different ways. You might be editing or revising, outlining or brainstorming, chatting with your writing group, interviewing alpha or beta readers, or working on building your author brand. All those things are productive uses of your time as an author.

But the main thing I want you to take away from this is that habits do not have to be daily to be worthwhile or effective. You may have even discovered this month that you do better on a writing schedule that isn’t daily. But whatever rhythm you’ve settled into this month, no matter how sustainable or otherwise you feel it is, you have built a habit – just maybe not the one you thought you would. The habit you have built is thinking of writing as a regular and highly prioritized part of your life. You’ve learned to give yourself permission to make it a priority. You haven’t taught yourself to write every day – no one writes every day.

Even people whose job is writing do not write every day, no matter what hustle-culture-steeped boasts you see flying around on social media from those who’ve “made it.” Creativity is a muscle, and muscles need to rest to get stronger. It’s also a tank that you sometimes need to stop and refill. I could throw a hundred metaphors at this, but the point of all of them is that a daily 1,000+ word writing habit is not sustainable in the long term for a vast majority of people, and that’s okay. Even promising that you’ll dedicate time to your writing, in whatever form that takes, is a difficult thing to hold yourself to, and you shouldn’t try. Creative burnout is real and very, very miserable. The way to reframe this advice in your head is: make dedicating time to your writing a priority in your life, so that it happens on a regular basis.

This will be the last Stupid Advice Saturday – at least for now. The finish line is almost upon us. No matter what your word count is, give yourself a huge pat on the back. And this holiday season, give yourself the gift of a break, and a nice long nap. Writer, you have earned it.

Happy napping.