Keeping The Momentum Going

My magic trick to keeping my momentum going on big writing projects.

So here in the US, it’s Thanksgiving week. Among other things, that means that whatever work I’ve been doing has been interrupted. (I am a somewhat obsessive home chef—here’s what my Thanksgiving Trello board looks like.)

Interruptions are inevitable on big writing projects. Sometimes, you get interrupted by circumstance: I’ve chosen to do this big manuscript push during the end-of-year holiday season. Other times though, you interrupt yourself. Other work intrudes, some life event happens and you lose the thread.

For me, the best way to minimize the disruption is this one trick: before you stop writing at the end of sitting, spend a few minutes figuring out what you’re going to write next. If you know what you’re going to do when you start, it makes it so much easier to get going again.

That One Magic Trick To Keep Your Momentum

When I say “know what you’re going to do,” I actually mean three things. You have to know what section you’re going to work on. You have to know the problem. And you have to have an idea for the solution. For me, if I don’t know all three of those things, I am stuck.

For example, tomorrow, I’m going to be working on a section of the manuscript that was written as a few pages of descriptive prose. That prose describes a process and describes how to do it. That’s a problem: the how-to has to be prominent, but it is buried inside the passage. As I re-read that section, I realized the solution: it had to be re-written as a how-to section, and it had to include step-wise instructions.

That would have been easy enough to do at the end of my last session, but I was getting tired. It’s tempting to push through—thinking, I can get this done and then knock off for the day. But this is actually the perfect stopping point!

Tomorrow, when I pick up, I know exactly what I’m going to work on. I know the section. I know the problem. I know the solution.

So… help your tomorrow-self get started. Tonight, make your plan for tomorrow before you stop today.

What do you do?

Do you use this trick? Something like it? I’d love to hear. Leave me a note…