Guest Post: "My Writing Habits, Good and Bad" by Hilary King
- Kaecey McCormick
- Mar 24
- 5 min read
Happy Tuesday, writers!
Something I return to again and again in my own creative life is the role of habit. Habit fascinates me because it is a something we can develop to become second nature. Or, as the American Psychological Association puts it, a behavior or sequence of behaviors "performed with little or no conscious intent.
This can either work against us or for us, and I love thinking about and developing ways to turn almost anything for my writing!
Today, I’m so pleased to welcome my friend and amazing poet Hilary King to the blog!
Hilary brings a thoughtful and honest perspective to the idea of writing habits, talking about what helps, what hinders, and how both can shape a creative practice over time.
👉To learn more about Hilary and her book, click to jump to About the Author or About the Books!
Keep reading as Hilary reflects on the routines she’s built over years of writing, from reading poetry in the early morning to submitting work regularly. She also touches on an unexpected “bad” habit that, in its own way, still leads her back to the page.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your writing habits are helping or hurting your process, or how to build a practice that actually works for your life, I think you’ll find a lot to relate to here.
Enjoy!
~Kaecey
My Writing Habits, Good and Bad
by Hilary King
As writers, we all have habits, good and bad. Or we should.
Habits, for writing, for life, can make our lives easier. If I want to run every morning, laying out my running shoes and running clothes every morning makes it easier to get up and go run every morning. It won’t guarantee that I will run, but it removes one barrier from the process.
It’s the same for writing. If I set myself up for writing, I’m likely to do more.
I do have good writing habits by now, twenty years into a writing career.
My good writing habits: reading, writing, submitting, connecting with other poets.
I get up early in the morning. I make my first cup of coffee, then I go read poetry. I keep a pile of books in my office and I sit with a small lamp on, and read. I try very hard to not look at my phone. I try to read for thirty minutes. This fills my mind with poetry, puts the forms and rhythms of poetry in my brain.
I don’t have to like the poetry I’m reading, I don’t have to love it. I just have to be in the atmosphere of it.
Then I write. I try to write down at least a few lines of poetry. It doesn’t have to be good. Then I get up and go about my day.
Inevitably, once I’ve gotten up, the idea for a poem comes to me. An idea that I want to work on, that I can’t wait to work on. Perhaps movement then is also a habit. Get up and move, walk, whatever. Let my mind–still in the atmosphere of poems–stir, sift, shake–til an idea or image falls through. My job to record the idea or image, on a notepad, or my phone and come back to it later.
Submitting my work is also a habit. I make it a habit to submit regularly, weekly. This helps me look back at my work. See where it needs revising. I revise before I submit and I revise after I submit. There is no moment of clarity stronger than right after hitting the Submit button. That’s when I realize exactly what the poem needs.
I do have at least one bad writing habit: falling for themed submissions.
A themed submission is one that asks for poems or writing about a specific topic or a general concept. Love, home, nature are general concepts. The Beatles, fairy tales, Thanksgiving dinner are specific topics.
What is it about a themed submission that acts like a siren call to me? I don’t know. When I see one that speaks to me, my mind is immediately sparked, ideas and images tumbling in and out.
I immediately want to start writing. Maybe I just like a good prompt.
Writing to themed submissions does not guarantee success. I may think I have written a compelling poem about the Beatles but so do a couple hundred other poets. I’ve had a few poems taken for themed calls, but more have been rejected.
Over time, I’ve learned how to handle this habit. I grant myself permission to write to the theme, but only for a limited period of time. Don’t get carried away, I tell myself. Write to the theme, but also not too strictly. End with a poem that can stand on its own.
This way I end up with what I want: poems. And those poems can live on their own–become part of a book or get published somewhere else.
Maybe then, all habits are helpful in some way to our writing process. If they get us writing more, get us writing better, than let’s embrace them.
~ Hilary
About Hilary King
Originally from the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, Hilary King is a poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Salamander, The Louisville Review, Fourth River, Common Ground Review, and other publications.
She was the 2023 winner of the Rose Warner Prize from Freshwater Review and the second place winner of the 2025 Common Ground Review Annual Poetry Prize.
She serves as an editor for DMQ Review, and her book of poems Stitched on Me was published by Riot in Your Throat Press in 2024. She is currently finishing her MFA in creative writing from San Jose State University.
Connect with Hilary online through her website!
Hilary's Most Recent Book
"Through keen observations and meditations on daily life, this fierce, bold collection of feminist poems interrogates the familial and societal expectations of women in the anthropocene. From the mall to Anne Sexton’s typewriter, from the movie Top Gun to the “battlefield” of one’s body, Hilary King invites readers to consider the wars women fight with ourselves and with those who so often seek to diminish us. What happens when instead of pretty things, we “want an empire,” when we “dream of conquering / dream of surrendering?” …It is a necessary, truth-telling commentary on the conflicts and contradictions that thread themselves through our complex identities and our lives."
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms, Night Swim
Interested in learning more? Pick up your copy of Hilary's poetry book at Amazon, Bookshop.org, or through her publisher, Riot in Your Throat.
Have thoughts on Hilary's post? Or maybe you've noticed how writing habits affect your writing process? Let us know by sending me a message or an email.
Happy Reading & Happy Writing!
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