Build a Sustainable Writing Process That Actually Works (Even If You’re Neurodivergent)

If you’re a fiction author who struggles to get words on the page consistently, you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve been told to "just write every day"—but that advice doesn’t always work. The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all writing routine, especially for writers with full lives, neurodivergent brains, or creative burnout.

In this post, we’re diving into how to create a writing life that feels sustainable, enjoyable, and productive—no matter your schedule, personality, or challenges.

1. Why Most Writing Advice Fails Fiction Authors

Fiction writers are constantly bombarded with rigid advice like:

• "Write every day."

• "Wake up at 5 AM to write."

• "Real writers never miss a day."

But here’s the problem: life is messy. You might have a demanding day job, kids, chronic illness, or just a different energy rhythm than other people. For many fiction authors, this kind of cookie-cutter advice creates more shame than success.

The truth? A rigid writing routine can actually kill your creativity.

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2. How to Find a Writing Practice That Fits You

Dr. Bailey Lang offers a beautiful reframe: your writing practice should feel good. In fact, she teaches her clients to treat their writing routine as an experiment, not a test of discipline.

Start with these four foundational steps:

1. Track your time. Where is your time really going? What are your current patterns?

2. Clarify what you want. When and where would you love to write? What feels good?

3. List what you need. What tools, space, or support do you need to make that happen?

4. Try and tweak. Give your new routine a few weeks—then adjust based on what’s working.

There’s no failure in this process. Only learning. Your writing practice should evolve with your life.

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3. The Sustainable Writing Process: Your Roadmap to Long-Term Creativity

Let’s be honest—anyone can write for a week. But how do you write a novel over the course of months or even years without burning out?

That’s where a sustainable writing process comes in. Dr. Lang’s framework encourages authors to build flexibility and joy into their routines. Here’s why it works:

• It adapts to life changes like illness, school, or job shifts.

• It’s built on self-awareness and intention, not pressure.

• It helps fiction writers reconnect with the joy of storytelling.

Whether you're neurodivergent or simply a creative thinker, your process needs to work with your brain—not against it.

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4. Writing Tips for Neurodivergent Creatives (And Why They Matter for Everyone)

Many traditional writing rules are built for left-brained, neurotypical thinkers. But what if your brain doesn’t work that way?

Dr. Lang—herself autistic—explains how writers with ADHD, autism, OCD, and other brain differences often need a different approach:

• Autistic authors may crave structure and familiarity.

• ADHD writers may thrive with novelty and flexibility.

• Everyone benefits from accommodating their unique needs.

This is especially helpful for writers who’ve felt shame for not “doing it right.” When you build a routine that feels good, you’re far more likely to stick with it.

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5. Your Writing Is Worth It—Even When the World Feels Heavy

In tough times, many writers wonder: “Who am I to write stories when the world is falling apart?” But the truth is, stories sustain us—as readers and creators. Fiction helps us process, escape, imagine, and heal.

So if you’ve been struggling to write, remember:

• You don’t need to follow the same routine as anyone else.

• You’re allowed to ask for accommodations.

• You are still a real writer—even if you don’t write every day.

• Your stories matter.

Start where you are. Write what you can. Create a writing life that brings you joy—and trust that you’re serving others through your words.

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Podcast Transcript:

Hey everybody, welcome back to Fiction Story Blueprint. In this episode I am going to be interviewing Dr. Bailey Lang and we're going to talk about creating a sustainable writing practice. We're going to talk about everything from the fact that the one-size-fits-all writing advice does generally not work for everyone, in fact it's wrong for most people.

We're going to talk about her framework, the different phases, for discovering what your optimal writing process is, and we're also going to talk about writing for neurodivergent creatives and how that could look different. Now I did want to do a little bit of an intro before we dive into the interview because we had some technical issues when we were filming. Zoom was not being very cool or very cooperative, so for the first part of the video you will see her just like you're seeing me now, and then after that we had to turn off her camera so that the internet connection would be cooperative.

So I just wanted to throw that out there, I hope you enjoy this interview and let's hop in. Hi there, do you have a great idea for a fiction story? A story you're dying to bring to the world, but you don't know where you're going with it, don't know how to fill out a compelling plot, and have a hard time sitting down to even write words, much less finish your story? Even when you do write, do you worry that it's boring, that it drags, and that readers are going to hate it? So you stay stuck, write and rewrite the same scenes, and eventually give up, ending up with a file of half-written manuscripts and glorious story ideas on your computer. Hi, my name is Liesl, USA Today best-selling author and writer of four genres, and I've been writing fiction for more than 15 years.

I teach fiction authors to write highly emotional stories based on elements of psychology and spirituality with an emphasis on your unique subconscious creativity. Did you know that human beings cannot be emotionally healthy without stories? That we'd all literally go mad if we couldn't tell ourselves stories and derive meaning from them? It's true, and a scientifically proven fact. So grab your chocolate of choice and your fuzzy slippers, let's turn that story snippet knocking around in your brain into a full-length novel that will give your reader that emotionally cathartic experience they long for, make you money, and change the world.

Who's with me? All right, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I am here today with Bailey Lang, and we are going to talk about building a sustainable writing life, basically, or a writing practice. I was really keen to have her come on and talk about that because, as most of you who listen to me know, my forte is in how to write and what to write and actually crafting your story and editing to some extent, but I don't talk as much about how to actually show up and get the words written, right? So thanks so much for joining us today, Bailey.

How are you? Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. I'm doing well.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Good, yeah, me too. So why don't you start by introducing yourself a little bit more? Just tell us, like, what you do and what you teach.

Awesome, yeah. So I'm Dr. Bailey Lang. My business is called The Writing Desk, and I help writers build sustainable, enjoyable writing practices that take their books from draft to done.

So I'm really focused on working with writers to figure out how they can create a writing practice that works for their actual lives and their projects, and kind of cutting through the noise of a lot of the sort of one-size-fits-all writing advice that we're all very familiar with that a lot of people find doesn't work when they try to apply it. Right, right. So, like, give us some examples of some of that, some one-size-fits-all writing advice.

Yeah, so the idea that you have to write every day. I think we all hear that one a lot, and it's not that that's bad advice, right? There are a lot of writers for whom that totally works, and they need the consistency of that regular schedule, that daily check-in with the project, and it's great to have that sort of regular routine. And there are a lot of writers who, for various reasons, that just does not work for, right? They might have a day job, they might have kids, they might have a chronic illness, they might have any number of circumstances that just mean there are going to be days where they cannot write.

And so if the only message you hear over and over again is you have to write every day or you're not a real writer, that's really going to affect your confidence, your ability to sustain a writing practice over the long term, it's going affect how you feel about yourself as a writer. Like, there's all sorts of knock-on effects when we have this sort of cookie-cutter approach to building a writing practice. Sure, sure, and I'm sure that you've noticed this too.

I noticed this kind of thing not only in the writing space, but in the, like, human being space, right? Where people, whatever works for them, they tend to tout that as, this is the best way to do it, everybody has to do it this way. And I try not to be too judgmental about that, I just think it's, like, human nature to do that, but everybody kind of has to know that they have to figure out what works for them and their personality. Not all of our personalities are the same, therefore not all of our writing habits will be the same, right? Yes, yeah, and I often think that comes from a really good place of someone who's like, I figured it out.

You know, like, it worked for me, this is awesome, I want to teach other people how to do this, and that's great. But like you said, right, just because it works for you doesn't mean it's going to work for someone else in a different circumstance. And so I think we need to have that nuance in there of, like, we need a whole toolbox of strategies that we can sort of pick and choose from and customize in a way that makes sense for us in our lives, and we're not just trying to copy what worked for a different person, because you just never know what's going on behind the scenes in somebody else's life.

Sure, sure. Yeah, life, I think, life is always experiment and see what works, and then if it doesn't, move on to the next thing, right? So if somebody comes to you and says, okay, I need, sorry, go ahead. Oh yeah, I was just, like, that's, that is the approach that I always take with my clients, is like, it's an experiment, right? We'll try it and we'll see if it works, and if it doesn't, we, like, we go back to the drawing board and we do something different.

There's no failure, there's only learning. Yeah, so I, I love treating a writing practice as an experiment with clients, and so we'll kind of try something, see if it works, give it a shot for a few weeks, and then we sort of reassess, right? And if something doesn't work, then we go back to the drawing board and, and we try something different, and I, you know, I like to tell people there's no failure, there's only learning, right? It's not that you did something wrong that a writing practice did not work for you, that just wasn't the right strategy, right? And you need to find something else. Right, right, yeah, I like that.

So if somebody comes to you and says, okay, I, I can't seem to, you know, get my butt in the chair and get the words written, and I want to build something sustainable so that I can write a book, where do you start? What do you tell them? Oof, yeah, that's a great question. I have those conversations with people all the time who are like, you know, I have this idea, I want to write this book, but I can't ever seem to find the time, and so that's often the first thing that I will do with people, is have them do some kind of time log for a couple of weeks, typically, and just see, right, where is your time actually going? Because we often think we know what we spend our days doing, and then if you keep some kind of record with a little more detail, you start to realize, oh, I spend a lot of time, like, not doing stuff, or, you know, I have these spare minutes between tasks where I'm just sort of scrolling on my phone, or, you know, I'm spending way more time watching TV than I thought, so there's all these little insights that you can get from getting the data on how you actually spend your time that can be really, really helpful for then deciding how you want to shift that, right, and so then you can start making some data-driven decisions about, you know, okay, maybe I watch one less episode of this show and use that 40 minutes as writing time instead, right, and so you can really get specific about what you want to change and what that looks like in a very realistic way that doesn't, it also then doesn't feel like, oh, I have to add one more thing to my to-do list and I'm already overwhelmed all the time, right, it becomes like, what can you maybe subtract instead of add and then slot in some writing time in a way that's going to feel really good, that's going to make you excited to show up to the page, and it's just replacing kind of a low-value activity, right, where you're wasting time or you feel like, you know, your time might be better spent working on the draft. If you have a great idea for a story premise but you don't know where you're going with it, if you're having a really hard time filling in plot events or finishing your current WIP, or if you're constantly worried that your story is boring or dragging or that your readers won't like it, then I encourage you to join the Legendary Fiction Forge, my monthly membership for fiction authors.

Inside, I will give you the complete A to Z blueprint for how to write highly emotional stories that your readers will absolutely fall in love with, no matter what your genre or tropes are. Want to become a widely read, highly paid master storyteller? Then join us in the Legendary Fiction Forge and finally get that epic story that's been knocking around in your brain forever out to the world. Right, right, yeah, I like that.

So do you have like a particular framework that you have people follow, or how do you go about helping them establish that? Yeah, so for actually building out a full practice, getting that insight into how you spend your time is one component of it, and then there's three other phases that I like people to kind of work through, and that's something that I work through with people one-on-one, and I teach this as well. So the first phase is identifying what you want, right, and this I think a lot of us skip or we have fantasies about what we might want our writing life to look like. You know, I'd love to live in a cabin in the woods and have no other responsibilities of any kind and just get up in the morning and be totally, you know, motivated and inspired and sit down and write all day.

Okay, that's probably not what your life looks like though, but like in a realistic way, what do you want, right? What time of day would you want to write in your life as it currently is as much as possible? What type of tools do you want to use as part of your writing practice? Are you fully digital? Do you like to write by hand? You know, what space do you want to be in when you do that writing? Is this, do you need to be like totally alone? Do you want to be in a cafe? So identifying those wants is a really important foundation, partly because a lot of us don't ask ourselves those questions, right? We sort of try to force things in wherever we can, but we don't give ourselves the space or the opportunity to think about what would a really, really pleasant, enjoyable writing practice feel like? And then the next phase is to look at what do you need? And so what are the supports and accommodations that are going to be helpful for you in getting closer to what you want? And so some of that, there's a phase in there where we we look at like what's the reality of your life right now, right? What do you want and what can you accomplish? So if you want to write first thing in the morning, but you work a typical eight to five job and you have to get your kids to school and there's all this other stuff going on in your early mornings, what you want and what you can achieve might look a little wonky, right? So you have to kind of figure out what can you do in there? What can you, what supports can you ask for? What accommodations can you achieve? What can you do to get a little bit closer to what you might want? And so looking for things like, okay, I need it to be really quiet when I write. And, you know, there's, I have roommates or, you know, there are kids in the house or I live in an apartment building with really thin walls and it's loud all the time, right? So something that you need might be to go to the library to write or invest in a really good pair of noise canceling headphones. So we start thinking about all of these really practical things that you can add around your practice to make it more achievable.

So what do you want, what can you do realistically? What do you need to make that happen? And then you try it, right? And depending on where somebody is in their writing practice, so if someone has an active writing practice, but they've kind of gotten stuck, how we implement this is going to look different from what I would do with someone who's like, I haven't picked up a pen in three years because I've been so blocked, right? So you might repeat that process once a week or once a month, depending on how comfortable you are with your writing practice as it already is. But the thing about that series of questions is it's, it's iterative, right? This isn't something that you're going to implement once and then it's going to be static forever because our lives aren't static, right? Something is going to change, right? Somebody's going to get sick, your job schedule is going to change, right? If you're a student, the semester will end and suddenly you have a completely new class schedule and you have to kind of reconfigure the whole thing. So the beauty of that framework is it's never about like you have done badly at your writing practice, right? It's just like your life circumstances are going to change and your practice needs to be flexible enough to accommodate that while also giving you the structure that helps you show up to the page and have fun with it.

It needs to feel good, right? You're never going to bully yourself into a good writing practice. Right, right. No, I really love a lot of what you said there.

I actually, I actually implement something very similar when they are writing their stories. I ask them, why do you want to write this story? What do you want it to feel like to the reader? Because yeah, without, I think we all kind of dive into things and we don't have self-awareness and that makes it really nebulous and that makes it really hard to pin down. So I like that you do that with your writing practice.

Yeah, it is a really, really useful framework. I think it takes out a lot of the kind of mystique that we can attach to the writing process. It takes out a lot of the self-criticism and judgment that I know a lot of creatives are prone to, myself included, certainly.

And it makes it just a neutral thing, right? Like this should be a source of joy, so how can I make it joyful, right? It's going to be so much more fun and so much easier to sustain if it is pleasant, right? If it's something that you really want to do. Yeah, absolutely. And we have this really bad habit in our society of trying to bully ourselves or willpower ourselves into habits.

And like you said, that just never, ever works. It just doesn't. And it's not fun.

That's why it doesn't work. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So we did want to talk a little bit about neurodivergence and would you go ahead and first of all explain what that means exactly? I know that for me, for the longest time, I had no idea what that meant. And so I didn't know whether it applied to me or not.

So just kind of give us an idea of what it means, what maybe some of the symptoms are, what people might be doing, and how they would know if it applies to them. And then just talk about how you help those who are neurodivergent to also create a sustainable writing practice. Yeah.

So neurodivergence is an umbrella term for a pretty broad variety of both inherent genetic developmental brain differences and also acquired brain differences. So things like autism, ADHD, OCD, Tourette's, these are all forms of neurodivergence. And so these are things that are kind of emerging from your, how your brain develops and differs from what we think of as neurotypical, right? So someone who does not have these divergences would be neurotypical.

Someone who does have these, these differences in how their brain operates, how their brains and bodies function would be considered neurodivergent. So those are, yeah. And you can also, you can become neurodivergent through head injuries, right? Brain cancer, you know, decades long meditation practice, anything that significantly changes the structure and function of your brain could also fall under the neurodivergence umbrella.

Okay. Good to know. And so how do you go about helping neurodivergent people with their writing practices as opposed to neurotypical? Yeah, this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about.

So I am, I'm autistic. Um, so I can do a really, really deep dive into topics that catch my interest. And writing practices and habits happen to be one of those subjects where I'm, I just find it endlessly interesting to, to think about like, how do creative people get their work done? And then how can I help other creative people learn from that so that they can get their own creative work done? Um, so that's, that is how that shows up for me.

Um, and I developed, so the framework that we just talked about, right, is especially good for, for neurodivergent people because it combines a couple of different things that work really well for neurodivergent brains. So if you're autistic, like me, odds are good that you really like structure, right? You need routine. Um, those things that feel comfortable and familiar and sustainable are going to be really beneficial for you.

This is not true of all autistic people. Um, autistic people are all unique as everybody is, but autistic people broadly tend to like a lot of structure and routine. If, for example, you are someone who is ADHD, you might need a lot of novelty, right? And so doing the same thing day in and day out is going to feel awful, right? And it's, it is just not going to work for your brain and your body.

So this framework kind of satisfies both of those needs because you can build a structure that works for now, right? And as soon as you feel it starting to not work, you know, okay, it's time to go back and reiterate this, right? I need to try something different. I need to add a new, uh, practice. I need to set up a different ritual, right? Whatever the case may be.

Um, if you, if you're someone who needs that novelty, right, that's already built in because you're always going to be doing that reflecting, checking back in and, and thinking about ways to, to inject that. And if you're someone who needs that structure, you have the structure of the framework, which is always going to be really helpful. And when things outside of your control are interfering with your writing routine, you can rebuild structure in a way that's going to feel really comfortable.

Um, so those are, those are two of the ways that that I think is really helpful for, for neurodivergent people. Uh, I also just generally, um, the approach that I take to helping people build a writing practice, um, my emphasis on not following the one size fits all approaches is very much geared toward neurodivergent writers because we are the, the creatives for whom a lot of that advice falls flat in various ways. Um, and that's, that's often something that gets missed in the conversation.

Um, so yeah, like having those conversations about how every writer needs something unique is true, whether you're neurodivergent or not, but if you are neurodivergent, right, acknowledging that is going to be one way to release some shame that has probably crept into your writing practice. Hmm. Yeah, I like that.

And I mean, I was, I was actually just thinking that as you were talking, I mean, I think a lot of the, you know, quote unquote, uh, normal writing advice that your typical writing advice that you're talking about, often it's geared, I almost want to say that it's often geared toward left brain individuals. And that's totally fine because there are left brain writers out there, but anyone who's right brained, that's at least to some extent going to fall flat for. So I was going to say, you know, whether you're neurodivergent or not, just because we're all different, we, there's not any two writers that have the exact same writing process.

So in a way we could almost consider all of us neurodivergent on, you know, even if it's not officially like on a low level, just in that we all need individual, uh, processes in order to accomplish this. Yeah. And that's, that's one of the beautiful things about accommodations, right? We, we often think of as accommodations as like, well, that is for a disabled person, right? Uh, that is for an autistic person, a person with ADHD.

But the truth is everybody benefits when we have more accommodating approaches, right? So think about like, uh, the curb cuts, you know, the corner of a street. Um, those are helpful for people with strollers, people in wheelchairs, right? People with service animals, um, people who, you know, who have any type of mobility challenge, everybody benefits from that. And it, it just makes it getting easier, makes getting around easier for everyone, right? So yes, so accommodations are, um, really, really important if you are neurodivergent, but even if you're not, think about what, what would be helpful for you, right? Learn about the types of accommodations that people use, and you will probably be surprised at how nice it feels if you try it.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I like that a lot.

That's great. Um, well, great. Thank you for, for coming and having this conversation with us.

Do you have anything else you want to talk about? Any, um, other advice that you want to dispense to authors? Yeah, I mean, I think especially right now, it's important to remind people that, um, writing and sustaining your creative practice when, you know, the world is weird, everything feels like a lot, the news, you know, is chaotic, um, and it can feel really hard to justify doing creative work under these conditions. And I'm, I'm, I hear this from a lot of writers right now who are like, who am I to write my little romance stories when, like, the world's on fire, you know? But we need those stories. Yeah.

The stories that keep us going so that we can put the fires out. And so I'm really like, I'm just trying to emphasize that every chance I get, your creativity is going to sustain you, and the stories that you tell are going to sustain somebody else. And that is how we get through stuff together.

So do your writing practice, right? Tell your stories, share your work. Yeah, 100%. I completely agree with that.

And I like that you hit both sides of it. It will sustain the author, the creativity always empowers us and makes us just feel better. And if everybody feels better, then the world isn't so crazy anymore.

But also, we human beings, we desperately need escapism in order to be mentally healthy. So I always tell people, don't ever let anyone tell you that creativity isn't serving other people. Like, you are serving people by helping them feel their feelings and helping them escape.

And you know, you actually can change the world through your stories. Would you agree with that? Yes, 100%. 100%.

It's so true. Yeah, great. Okay, well, let me ask you one more question then before we wrap up.

What do you wish that you had known when you got started? Oh, what do I wish I had known? I mean, I wish I'd known I was autistic before I was in my 30s. I think that that would have made a big difference in a lot of the creative pressure that I put on myself and the ways that I have really criticized myself for not living up to some of that one size fits all advice. There's the joke that like, we teach the things we most needed to learn.

And that's definitely been the case for me, right? And so learning about my own neurodivergence has really helped me become a better writer and a better coach. So it would have been nice to know that earlier. But now that I have that knowledge, I can really put it into practice in super effective ways.

So it's yeah, that's been really powerful. Yeah. And I guess I mean, really, that's kind of what it comes down to everything we've been talking about, to hopefully empower other writers who if the typical advice doesn't work for you, and you do need some sort of accommodation, just figure that out.

Now don't reject it. Don't don't resist it, you know, just put it into practice now and make your life so much easier. Yeah.

And don't beat yourself up about it. Like we all we all need help. And there's no shame in you know, getting the support that is going to help you tell your stories.

Right. Totally agree. Totally agree.

Well, great. Thank you again so much for coming and talking to us about this. Like I said, I was really keen to have this conversation because it's not something I think we talked about enough in the writing world.

Where can people find you and follow you if they want to learn more? Yeah, so the best place to get in touch with me is through my website. And that is usethewritingdesk.com. So there you can find links to all of my different services and to my newsletter, which is called Word to the Wise. And that comes out every Wednesday.

It is packed with all sorts of research based writing advice. And a couple times a month, I interview, publish and working writers on how they're building their writing practices. So if this is an interesting topic to you, there's so much more of that over on the newsletter.

All right, great. I will make sure and link all of that up in the show notes. And just thank you again so much for being here with us and talking to us about this.

Yeah, thank you for having me. This was wonderful. Thanks for listening today.

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So get out there and write your soul story because your readers are waiting for it with bated breath.