How to Stay Consistent With Writing During the Holidays – A Gentle, Practical Guide

The holidays arrive with lights, music, and a calendar that suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else. For writers, November through January can feel like the manuscript has been temporarily relocated to another planet.

Yet this same season brings richer sensory detail, deeper emotions, and unexpected pockets of time that can actually serve the work—if we meet the month on its own terms.

Here are eight realistic ways to keep a writing practice alive during the holidays without adding one more source of stress.

1. Redefine what “consistent” means right now

Daily writing is ideal in ordinary months. In December, weekly writing is still forward motion. Aim for 4–6 sessions a week instead of 7. Aim for 300 words instead of 1,000. The manuscript doesn’t measure effort the way guilt does; it only counts the words that arrive.

2. Find or create one repeatable pocket of time

Fifteen minutes before anyone else wakes up. Twenty minutes after the house is asleep. The length of one pot of coffee on a weekend morning. Choose a window that belongs almost entirely to the season (early mornings in December are often quieter than in ordinary months) and guard it gently but firmly.

3. Let the season feed the page

The holidays are saturated with sensory and emotional material most of us only get once a year: specific smells, lights at dusk, old songs, complicated feelings about family, the particular hush of fresh snow. Keep a running note titled “December Details.” One line a day is enough. By January you’ll have a small treasure chest of authentic texture to mine for years.

4. Write in the margins of the season

Waiting for water to boil, sitting in traffic on the way to a gathering, the ten minutes after lunch before the next obligation—these fragments add up. Voice memos while driving or walking, a Google Doc open on your phone, or a tiny notebook in your coat pocket turn dead time into live time.

5. Schedule deliberate days off in advance

Choose them now: December 24, 25, 31, January 1—whatever days feel sacred or impossible. Write them in ink and treat them as non-negotiable rest. Knowing the off-ramps are already built in makes every other day feel spacious instead of obligatory.

6. Use a forgiving tracking method

Instead of a streak that can break, try a jar or a simple list. Each day you touch the manuscript—even for ten minutes—drop in a coin, a bead, or add a checkmark. By January the collection is visible proof that progress happened, even if it was quiet.

7. Pair writing with something the season already offers

A particular warm drink, a string of lights, a playlist of quiet instrumentals, a candle that only gets burned in December. After a few sessions your brain begins to associate that small seasonal pleasure with opening the file. The holidays stop competing with the work and start inviting it.

8. Finish the year by protecting the reason you write

The story matters because it helps you (and eventually your readers) make sense of being human. The holidays are one of the most human times of year—messy, beautiful, exhausting, luminous. A few hundred words written beside a twinkling tree or in an airport at dawn are often some of the truest you’ll ever put down.

The manuscript will wait patiently for January’s longer mornings. It will also welcome whatever you can give it now, no audition required.

Wishing you a peaceful, productive end of the year—and just enough quiet to hear the next sentence arrive.