Pull out three sheets of paper. Label the first page “Starting,” the second page “Working,” and the third page “Completing.” List as many strategies as you can to help you start, work, and complete your creative project.
What strategies do you use to begin and carry you through a writing project? Preparing a list of strategies for each phase—starting, working, and completing—will provide you with a resource to turn to whenever you feel you might be getting stuck.
Create short-term or immediate strategies, as well as mid- and long-term ones.
For example, your “Starting” column might include a short-term strategy such as purchasing and labeling a special notebook for your new project. It may also include an immediate strategy you employ every single day when you sit to begin your work, such as making a cup of green tea. A long-term “Starting” strategy might involve several weeks of research about the planets to be sure the world you are creating in your sci-fi novel is believable.
Certain strategies will be unique to the project itself.
Others are universal or general, and may have more to do with the writer than the project. If you know that music stimulates your creativity or evokes a mood that you need in order to write, then your general strategy is to always have music in the background while you write. The project-specific strategy involves picking out the specific type of music, artist, or song that puts you in the right mindset for the genre you are writing.
Here are a few strategies that may give you some ideas for your own lists.
STARTING
- Make a cup of green tea every morning to take with me when I sit to write. (I might also include this strategy under “Working.”)
- Make a list of what has to be researched before I start writing. (Beware of any propensity to use this as an excuse for not starting the actual writing.)
- Identify the people I need to interview before I start writing. (Ditto, the above warning to myself.)
- Create character sketches for each main character, including their backstory.
- Create a timeline of events for the story.
- Consider chapter titles.
- Play with character or place names.
- Mind-map the structure of the book; outline.
- Gather quotes to include in the book. (Depending on the type of book, this might also appear under “Working.”)
WORKING
- Leave a sentence unfinished at the end of my writing session so when I come back to it the next time, I have a starting place (reportedly, Hemingway’s technique).
- Conduct interviews, compile notes, and pull out the points I can use in the manuscript.
- As I research XXXX, gather notes and organize the material that will be usable in the book.
- Reward myself with XXXX after completing each chapter.
- Revise the character sketches as the book/plot develops.
- Modify the timeline as the book progresses.
- Prepare myself for every writing session by meditating for fifteen minutes beforehand.
COMPLETING
- Finalize the timeline of the story.
- Pick an ending, whatever it is, and write toward that ending.
- Return again to “Starting” and begin the next book; repeat as often as necessary.
What strategies, both general and project-specific, are on your lists for starting, working, and completing your next writing project?
This creativity tip was inspired by The 97 Best Creativity Tips Ever! by Dr. Eric Maisel (2011), and is used with his permission.
Gina Edwards is a retreat leader, a certified creativity coach, and a book editor. She is also a writer, so she’s intimately familiar with the challenges and elation that come with being one.
She supports all writers—published and aspiring—who want to write as an act of courageous and necessary self-expression.
Walking the writer’s path hand-in-hand with her clients and students, she helps them establish a writing practice and define a creative life on their own terms.