Warning: Don’t lose your momentum while writing!
In all the years I have been writing, and in all the writing projects I have undertaken – whether fiction, articles, blog posts, essays, etc, one thing that has always held true is that if the momentum of my writing project dies, the project will probably be doomed.
You are probably asking, "What is this momentum you’re talking about"? When I refer to momentum in this post, I’m talking about keeping a writing project going until it is done. This means writing every day and always making progress – always moving forward.
How does the momentum die? Usually, you start to lose your momentum on a writing project when you let it sit unfinished for a few days. Or even worse, a few weeks go by without even looking at your partial manuscript. Your imagination will no longer be engaged in your story and it will take all that much more effort to get the momentum going.
Think of a long freight train stopped on the tracks. To get that train moving, it’s going to take a lot of power. But once it is rolling, it’s easier to make little adjustments to the speed and the train’s own momentum will carry it a long way. Even if you cut the train’s power, it will keep rolling (probably for several miles) before coming to a stop.
Starting a new writing project takes a lot of imaginative power to get it rolling. You gotta come up with the plot, setting, characters, voice, point-of-view and everything else that goes along with writing a piece of fiction. That initial excitement is often what fuels the power to start writing, and it is that excitement you want to use to keep the momentum going.
That is another reason to keep on moving with a writing project. If you keep the momentum going, you’re more likely to stay excited about the project and it will reflect in your writing. For me, if I stop writing for even a day or two on a project, the excitement really dies down and I have to work hard to get it back.
Writing is one of those endeavors that takes work, patience and a bit of a thick skin to be successful at. We often take our own writing very personally and it doesn’t take much to wound our fragile psyche, which can easily derail any momentum we had. As soon as my "inner critic" starts questioning the quality of my writing project, I have to work twice as hard to keep going – and most of that work involves me just staying motivated.
How do you keep the momentum going while you’re writing? Let us know in a comment below! Don’t be shy, I promise not to bite.
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