Life’s distractions force busy writers to pause today’s writing, stopping your creative flow.
Creative Flow Disruptions
That’s not a big problem, if only for a few minutes. But when the disruption stretches into the next day or even next week, writers often lose their creative flow. Worse, without the inspiration to continue, too many capable writers get frustrated and set aside their writing projects.
Fortunately, bestselling authors use simple methods to continue writing as if they never stopped, and you can adopt their practices today!
Keep Up Your Creative flow
Use these bestselling author practices to keep up your creative flow.
- Use your writing app to mark the status of the scene.
I use Scrivener to mark the status of a document. When I restart writing, I can easily find the “In Progress” scene.
- Write a brief note about your thinking when you paused.
Within the content of a scene, paragraph, or sentence, I leave myself a “bracketed and highlighted note” regarding my thinking at the moment before a distraction forced me to pause writing.
- Record what you have to do next.
I also write myself a note about unfinished tasks.
- Add a link to the research you’ll need.
The worse part of a distraction is when you’ve researched something, but because of the disruption, you don’t have time to use the information. When that happens, I capture the link and paste it into a note in my writing app.
Conclusion
Using these methods, you can:
- Restart writing like you never stopped.
- Work on many tasks without feeling overwhelmed.
- Adopt essential work habits of bestselling authors.
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How do you keep up your creative flow whenever life’s distractions force you to hit the pause button?
Great tips. I like to jot a note in my calendar on the appropriate day(s) what I did and what I need to next.
Excellent, Priscilla! I like your method of recording of where you’ve been and where you’re going. I’ve planned a future post where I’ll share my ABC method of capturing and prioritizing tasks, which works similar to your calendar but stored in my writer’s database.
These are great ideas, Grant. I like the tip on writing down some last thoughts before leaving the day’s writing. Coming back fresh sometimes sends us off in a slightly different direction (which could be a good thing), but it’s also important to have that continuity when we pick up the “pen” again.
If it’s a long pause, I’m amazed how the synapsis fires off with fresh ideas. Thanks, Anneli!
It makes the writing kind of fun when it tries to take off on its own. You just have to keep a tight rein on it if it threatens to go off the rails, but often it’s from a fresh idea and if it works, it can do the book a lot of good.
Everything I hear about Scrivener, it should be a shoo-in for my organization style. For some reason, I haven’t tried it.
Introducing Scrivener 3 for PCs put the app on par with the app for Macs. If writers recognize the time spent learning MS Word, they’d realize Scrivener is no harder to use and offers many advantages. With your penchant for tech, I think you’d love Scrivener.