Momentum

When I am caught up in a big writ­ing project there is a great deal to be said for momen­tum, that almost obses­sive dri­ve to push for­ward, to work as many hours as I can.  I have learned that the more I am total­ly involved the more I know my char­ac­ters, their true artic­u­la­tion, their desires and motives. Work­ing that way I can see the plot and its details, as well as find new twists and turns, bet­ter lan­guage. When that hap­pens the writ­ing can become good. Then, when that part is done there all kinds of ways to revise, cut, edit and so forth, many of which I have talked about here. There is how­ev­er, some­thing else that one can do that is often vast­ly pro­duc­tive: Do noth­ing.

What I am sug­gest­ing is that it can be enor­mous­ly fruit­ful to just walk away from your work, avoid it, don’t look at it, and hard­est of all, try not to even think about it. Let it—in my own jar­gon—cook. Tru­ly, the longer you keep away the bet­ter it is for you, the writer. The rea­son? When you final­ly come back to the work, you look at it with dif­fer­ent eyes. Tru­ly, I wish I had the patience to leave my work alone for a month, or two. I don’t. And often dead­lines dic­tate oth­er­wise. How­ev­er, even a week of absti­nence makes a dif­fer­ence. It’s not that absence makes the heart grow fonder—just the oppo­site. Absence makes the heart a bet­ter crit­ic. A very good thing. So try doing noth­ing. You might be sur­prised by how much you achieve.