Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig on Twitter) had a great post on Terrible Minds: “Can’t Finish That Novel? Try Dopamine!” The premise is that one of the reasons writing is hard is that the rewards for your hard work are put off for a long time. In contrast, things like video games give you more immediate rewards for your hard work (experience points, special items, the oh-so-satisfying “ding!” when you level up), and that keeps you playing for a long time — sometimes a lot longer than you had planned.

(Everyone who has been shocked to find that they’ve been playing until 4 am, raise your hand. Thought so!)

The idea is that even purely symbolic rewards (even the flash of experience points on the screen) triggers the part of your brain that rewards you for good work, and it releases dopamine to give you an immediate sense of satisfaction as a reward. This works on people the same way it works on lab rats.

This got me thinking about something I’ve been meaning to write a blog entry about for some time now: How to get yourself addicted to writing.

Behavioral psychology shows that the best way to get “addicted” to being productive is to get that dopamine rush on a variable-ratio schedule. The way this works is that once you complete a task, there’s some probability of getting a reward; the more often you complete it, the more often you get rewarded … but you never know for sure when that will happen. It might be after 10 more times, or it might be the very next one.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the principle that keeps people sitting at slot machines, mechanically pulling the lever as often as the machine will let them. It’s also what makes some video games (especially MMOs) so addictive, when you think about it; many opponents randomly “drop” special items, and sometimes they’re really, really good — so you’ll sit there, plowing through opponents for hours if necessary, to get that super-special +5 Überslayer Sword of Doom.

How do you get this to work for yourself when writing? Well, I’m not a programmer so I can’t do anything that special, but almost every one of us has a nice randomization device available all the time: an iPod, iPhone, mp3 player, etc. set on shuffle.

Start by making yourself some audio files; make one that’s blank (no sound) and about 60 minutes long. Make a few others that have some sort of rewarding sound (a sample of a crowd cheering, or maybe the nostalgia-stirring sound of a power-up or 1UP in the old Super Mario Bros.), follow by a recording of yourself telling you what prize you won. There are plenty of free programs that allow you to make audio files of any length you require; I’ve had good results with WavePad and Audacity, but there are many others you might try.

The prizes should range from the really mundane and simple (coffee break, cigarette break, Angry Birds break, or whatever your personal demon might be) to events that should come up once a day (break for lunch, or call it a day if you’ve already had lunch once) to periodic treats for yourself (“Nice job! Let’s call it a day and order a pizza!”) to rare, special prizes you buy for yourself (“Congratulations! You just bought yourself an iPad 2!” or “Wooooooo! Time to hit the strip clubs!”).

It doesn’t matter what the rewards are as long as they work for you, you can commit to actually buying them for yourself (e.g. don’t promise yourself a new car unless you can actually afford it), and your roommate, spouse, kids, etc. won’t object too strenuously to you buying it.

Assemble a playlist with a whole bunch of copies of the “blank” audio file, about 1/2 as many of the “short break” rewards, 1/4 as many of the “long break” (lunch/end of day) rewards, and then progressively fewer of the really special rewards (say, 1/20 for something as minor as getting food delivered to maybe 1/100 to 1/1000 or less for the high-end super-special rewards). This playlist will be freaking huge, but don’t let that scare you.

When you’re working, put the playlist on random and repeat, and start it on one of the blank, hour-long tracks. Write, write, write. Every time you finish a full page (or whatever short-term but easy-to-identify benchmark you want … make it worth about 30 to 60 minutes of work for you, on average), skip to the next track — maybe it will be another blank track and you go back to work. Maybe it will be a short break. Maybe it will be a night of debauchery with strippers and booze. Maybe — very rarely! — you’ll hit the jackpot and get multiple rewards in a row: Cigarettes, pizza, new iPad, and strippers.

If you really, honestly hit a terrible stretch of writer’s block, you’ll still go to the next track after an hour — just promise yourself that you’ll pause immediately if you’re away from the keyboard or doing anything but writing. Force yourself to keep going — and the more you write, the more often you get a chance to buy yourself something really cool. Soon, the rewards for writing faster will get you over your writer’s block, and your writing speed will increase dramatically.

Over time, as you get to higher and higher levels of production, you can increase the number of blank tracks in the playlist. Do this gradually to hold yourself to an ever-increasing standard, but reward yourself by adding another high-end reward to the list every time you do. Just make sure you’re adding a lot more blank tracks than reward tracks.

As long as you can employ two really minor bits of discipline — always work when the playlist is running, and always buy yourself what you’ve earned — you’ll be getting a nice hot injection of dopamine with enough regularity that you’ll quite literally become addicted to writing. Try it for your next long-term writing project.