At some point in your story, your readers will require backfill, also known as expository details. You’ll need to describe the characters, explain the history of a location, or establish a relationship. But how do you include this information without slowing the plot so much that your readers become disinterested?
First, I ask, “Is this part even necessary?” If the answer is yes, and the rest of your story won’t make sense without it, don’t fear, there is a way to include this information while still engaging the reader.
Here’s how you can approach it with The Swimming Pool Theory:
Consider your story like a kick off the sidewall in a swimming pool, pushing off to the deep end, propelling your narrative forward. If you want your readers to float past the backfill of your story, loaded with descriptions and historical context, you need to first create momentum.
This push should come as an intriguing moment in the story: a moment of intensity, a moment where a problem occurs, a defining turning point, or a moment where something surprising was said. These moments pose new questions that must be answered and powered by curiosity, the readers will continue reading, desperate to discover.
This allows you to maintain the tension while including backfill, essential but less exciting information. These are information that readers need but they might not want to continue reading if it was in the first paragraph. These information are not hooks, but rather promises. You are now making a promise that if they swim through all this exposition, there will be a payoff. They will learn the answer.
Writing is all about choosing what details to share and when to share them. By recognizing how your story ebbs and flows, you can weave a tale that is well-paced and enjoyable the whole way through, also known as a page-turner.
Instead of giving out information as it happens, switch it around. Switch paragraphs, scenes, and even chapters around. If you’re ever in an editing rut, and you’re not sure what to look for, look at what’s kicking your story off the wall in the swimming pool. Feel for how far that momentum will take the readers and decide when you need another intriguing scene to kick forward. And if you don’t have enough of these key moments pushing your readers along, that means you’ll have to write it.
Backfill is necessary for a story, especially if you’re world-building. However, if all you give them are details, they are going to lose interest. So think of your story as being in a pool, how will you push off to the deep end?
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The comma is the most complicated punctuation mark in the English language. Not only does it have many uses, but it also has many misuses. In The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and EB White (Amazon), four punctuation principles were deemed most important and that “they should be so thoroughly mastered that their application becomes second nature.”
Now, if you’re ready, grab a pen and notebook, strap yourself in because we are going to quickly go through these 4 important punctuation rules:
1. Enclose parenthetical expressions with commas
Take this example:
The dog that ran away came back with a cat.
The fact that the dog ran away is extra information. But this information is also essential to the sentence.
It’s this essentialness, or restrictiveness, that determines the role commas play.
A parenthetical expression is a word or phrase that adds to the sentence to give extra information.
If the information is essential such as in:
The dog that ran away came back with a cat.
You may omit the commas.
However, you can add commas to separate, if the information is nonessential, such as in:
The dog, hungry for treats, came back with a cat.
So remember it this way, if the information is essential you may omit the commas, but if the information can be removed without influencing the meaning of the sentence then you should add the commas.
Another way to put it is to recognize nonrestrictive terms and clauses, as they will often require commas. In the middle of a sentence these nonrestrictive clauses are often preceded by “Which”, “When”, and “Where”: Such as:
The car, which was illegally parked, got towed.
Nonrestrictive clauses may also appear at the beginning of a sentence:
Parking the car illegally, the man hurried into the store.
To summarize:
You won’t need commas for a sentence like: The boy is a criminal.
But you will need one for: My son, Billy, stole my car.
How are we doing? A little confusing, eh? You’re not alone. This rule for me is one of the most challenging in the entire language because sometimes the importance of the information can feel subjective.
But don’t feel bogged down by all the commas, Strunk and White give you permission to omit them if the interruption is short.
If you are to remove the commas, however, don’t remove one but not the other.
If you are to remove the commas, however don’t remove one but not the other.
Personally, I always use commas to break up “however”, as well as dates: Saturday, June 4, 2022
According to Strunk and White: If the clauses in the sentence share the same subject, the subject is only expressed once, and the conjunction is “but” then adding a comma will be useful.
The robbers found a hiding spot, but forgot to take the money.
However, if the conjunction is “and” then omitting the comma will be okay as the two interlinking thoughts are closely related.
The police found the money in the car and decided to keep it for themselves.
3. Do not join independent clauses with a comma.
If you have two complete and separate thoughts with their own subject and verb, such as:
WRONG: The monster emerged from the swamp, the terrified campers climbed up the tree.
Do Not place a comma between them.
To correct it, you have a few options:
The first option is breaking it into two sentences and using a period — or an exclamation mark — while capitalizing the first letter of the following sentence:
The monster emerged from the swap. The terrified campers climbed up the tree.
The monster emerged from the swap! The terrified campers climbed up the tree.
Alternatively, you can combine the sentences by using a semi-colon or adding a comma and conjunction.
The monster emerged from the swap; the terrified campers climbed up the tree.
The monster emerged from the swap, so the terrified campers climbed up the tree.
As you can tell, changing the punctuation mark changes the relationship between the two statements. The better you understand this principle, the better control you’ll have of your writing style. Personally, I’m a comma/conjunction type of guy, but let me know which one you prefer in the comment below.
4. Do not break sentences in two.
Simply put, commas cannot replace periods and periods cannot replace commas. A period’s primary function is to separate complete sentences, so when you use it instead of commas, you’ll likely end up with sentence fragments. For example:
He was a wealthy man. Having earned all his money through buying and trading crypto.
It should be:
He was a wealthy man, having earned all his money through buying and trading crypto.
A complete sentence has a subject and verb, and while the first part can stand as an independent clause, the second half of that sentence is missing the subject.
An exception to this principle, which I’d recommend using sparingly, is to break the sentence when you want to emphasize a specific word. Such as:
He punched the wall. Hard.
There you have it! Those are four of the most important punctuation principles according to Strunk and White. Once you get a hang of them, you will be well on your way to being a proficient writer and editor with another tool in your tool belt.
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One way to stay consistent is to keep track of what you’re doing. By keeping track you can actually see — over the course of many months and years — how consistent you’ve actually been. Did you take a break during the holidays? Did you make big progress during the summer? These are things you can see when you start tracking your writing and other creative projects.
A tracker can be anything you want, it can be a notebook, it could be a spreadsheet, but I like a simple calendar. Preferably Google Calendar.
When you start tracking your work, whether you’re writing a novel, building a YouTube channel, or growing a business, you’ll begin to see ups and downs. Sometimes you’re doing great: you increase your word count or you hit a record high days in a row of working on a project. Other times you see lows: days where you didn’t even open your notebook or edit a video. It’s that week that you got sick and you didn’t publish or that month when you were on vacation.
It is in these lows — or as I like to call them, valleys — that you lose your momentum. These valleys can expand into canyons if you don’t handle them properly. These valleys can be so demoralizing, especially when you are looking up and seeing how high your peaks were and you question whether you can ever get back to that level.
Tracking your work keeps you honest and it can be a compassionate motivator if you know how to use it. The secret is in how we define “progress”.
Sure there will be days where you don’t make a lot of progress in your writing, but you took some photographs that help to inspire your next chapter. It’s easy to dismiss that activity and call it something else besides work and, therefore, you don’t track it. But maybe you can track it. Mark it down as “Doing research for the novel”, categorize it differently from “word counts” or “publishing”, give it a different color in the tracker if you must, but track it.
You get to decide what you want to track as creative work. It could be reading, watching a movie, or listening to a new album to get inspiration. All this could be considered research. All this could be a way to refresh your creativity because creativity can come in those moments where you aren’t at the computer writing or editing.
As you begin to include these other activities in your tracker, you’ll see that your valleys aren’t a dramatic drop-off. Your valleys aren’t pits and they contain moments where you were making progress, albeit you weren’t increasing your word count, polishing your piece, or hitting publish.
Focusing on raising your valleys to me has been super effective in staying consistent. And it works for all things. No project or business can maintain a straight hockey stick growth forever. Eventually, you’ll have to battle with peaks and valleys. Peaks are great! Everything is wonderful when you are at the peak.
In fact, it feels so good, we end up putting too much attention on it. Our highest records, our biggest profit, or recorded breaking post. The peak is great, but it doesn’t need your immediate attention. Focus on the valleys. It is the valleys that will make all the difference in terms of your longevity and growth. Focus on increasing your valleys by tracking what you did during those days that impacted your project indirectly. The higher your valleys become, the higher your baseline will be over time.
Rather than trying to reach a higher peak by putting in all-nighters for a week and then burning out. Focus on doing a little bit every day, adding more as you go, and pulling back if you need rest. Maintaining your valley will keep you consistent. The beautiful thing about all of this is that you get to decide how to track your growth. Not all tasks are equal, but all tasks can be tracked. When they are, you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time. You’ll see progress, even if it is a long slog through the valley.
This is a mindset that has worked for me, I hope it works for you. Let me know if you have another method of staying consistent in the comments below.
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Tim Ferriss, the author and podcaster, is all about optimizing his performance in every way. His books The 4 Hour Chef (Amazon) and Tools of Titans (Amazon) have helped me tremendously, and when he spoke about his process of acquiring feedback, I knew his approach was tried and true.
In episode 538 of the Tim Ferriss Show, in a casual conversation with author Chris Hutchins, Tim explained how he gathered effective feedback, especially at the early stages of a project.
If you’ve ever asked a friend to read your work and give feedback, you know how stressful, time-consuming, and unproductive that process can be. This is especially true if all you’ve given them is the manuscript and vague instructions like “give me feedback” or “let me know what you think.” Such an experience could cause unnecessary tension between friends.
To avoid that scenario, allow me to share with you Tim’s method for getting clear, succinct, and useful feedback for his writing and interviews.
Break Chapters Into “Self-Sufficient” Pieces That Stand Alone
When writing, Tim makes sure that each of his chapters can stand on its own as a “kind of modular” like a “feature magazine article.”
If you’re writing non-fiction, each of your chapters can be treated like a blog post. If you’re writing fiction, each of your chapters could have a story arc and could be published as a short story.
With each chapter as an individual piece, Tim’s friends and editors only need to read one chapter, instead of a whole book, to have the context necessary to give useful feedback.
Share the Single Chapter with 3-4 Writer or Lawyer Friends
When picking who he would share his work with, Tim usually chooses friends who are writers or lawyers or those who have attended law school. He picks these people because they have the proper training in reviewing text and spotting ambiguity. These professionals also have a keen eye for superfluous details that should be cut.
While you might not have any writer or lawyer friends, who you choose to share your work with still matters. If your friend is not an avid reader or has no interest in your topic or genre, they can’t really help you. Understanding your network and the strengths and weaknesses of the individual is essential because you don’t want to waste time and get frustrated when the person sharing feedback isn’t qualified. In a scenario like that, it might be better to have no feedback at all.
Sharp, observant, and capable of proofreading are qualities you look for in beta readers — and writers and lawyers tend to have those traits
However, getting a diverse sample of feedback is also important. That is why Tim doesn’t only share it with one person, but with four.
Love It Or Hate It, It Can’t Be Confusing
Once Tim has a team of reviewers, he approaches them with one or two asks. For the first, Tim requests:
“Please read this. And if anything is confusing, please note that. You can love it. You can hate it. I’m fine with either of those, but if it’s confusing, it’s no good for anyone. So if anything’s confusing, please note. If your mind starts to wander, please note where that is.”
Whether with audio or text, the goal of the piece is to inform and captivate. If the reader or listener gets bored, distracted, or confused by a certain part, it’s important for Tim to know where that is so he could modify or remove it.
The point is not to get a rave review. The personal taste of the reader doesn’t matter at this point. The goal is to figure out whether it’s useful to anyone, and if it’s unclear or dull, it’s useless.
Ask: Which 20% Should I Cut?
His second and preferred request is to ask: “If I had to cut 20 percent, which 20 percent would I cut?”
Knowing what’s the core and what’s excess is important. This gives you an idea of where you should focus your attention when you’re editing. How concise and succinct can you make it? This forces you to take a closer look at the remaining 80% and examine the substance of your piece.
The thing is, when you ask four people, not all four will have the same opinion. So when a situation like that occurs, Tim has a firm rule.
If 1 Out Of 4 Love It, Keep It
If three people tell Tim to cut out a section, while one person says that they love that section, he will keep it. He does this because something that resonated so strongly with one person is a good enough reason to keep it. If he cut it, it might’ve saved some room, but it would have potentially failed to impact one out of every four people, which is a big percentage.
You cannot serve everyone, but when you know you can serve someone, serve them!
Don’t Ask For Feedback If You Don’t Plan On Taking It
Lastly, perhaps what I found to be the most important piece of advice, is to not ask for feedback if you don’t plan on using it in some way. If you know you’re not willing to make changes, then why bother taking up someone else’s time?
When Tim received his writer or lawyer friend’s feedback, and the suggestions are valid, he would apply it to his work and improve it.
If you’ve picked the right beta readers, respect their opinions, and trust that they have your best interest, why wouldn’t you keep an open mind? When receiving feedback we need to lose the ego, otherwise, it might be better not to ask for their thoughts at all.
When asking people for feedback, we’re requesting their time and energy. They’re doing us a favor and as such, we should be grateful. That is why I think Tim Ferriss’s process is solid because first, he makes the request digestible. Then he chooses those that are qualified for the job and ensures what he needs is clear. Finally, he prepares for how the feedback will be used so he doesn’t lose sight of the bigger picture, which is to provide captivating and valuable content to the largest group of people possible.
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If you’re working full-time like I am, it’s hard to find time to write. At the end of the day, you’re tired. You’ve depleted your creative energy. But not only that, by waiting until you’ve finished everything else, you’ve been carrying around this anxiety all day long. I hate that. And you probably do as well. It can make you resent all the other responsibilities you have.
So, to make sure I can get some words down with guilt-free energy, I wake up an hour early each day to write.
Before we get into the details of my experience, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Elliot and I’m a writer. I’m currently working on a novel and if you want to hear how that’s going, check out this video here or in the description, and if you are interested in following along on my journey, please subscribe.
Now back to the current video. Here’s what I can tell you about my experience waking up an hour early to write.
Get up 60 min, 90 min, or 110 min earlier
When I say I wake up an hour earlier, I don’t mean the break of dawn. I use to get up at 8 am, now I get up at 7 am. It’s not that impressive when I say it like that. But again, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.
However, if you’re finding it hard to get up 60 minutes earlier, try getting up 90 or 110 minutes earlier. You might actually feel more refreshed. The reason is that a sleep cycle is between 90 to 110 min long, so by reducing your sleep, you may actually wake up at the end of a cycle instead of in the middle.
When I write in the morning, I write longhand
For my job, I’m going to be spending my whole day in front of the computer. In order to reduce my screen time, especially first thing in the morning, I choose to write longhand.
I find that writing physically in a notebook gives me a stronger connection with the words. Also, when I’m at the computer, it’s too easy to hit the delete key. I’d be damned that if I woke up early and did not get my words down. By writing it on paper, and not being able to erase it, I know that at the very least, I’ve made a mark on the day.
When I talk about waking up earlier, I know what many of you are thinking: “but I’m not a morning person.” Fair. I’m not a morning person either, but I used to work the opening shift at a Starbucks that opened at 5 am, which meant that I needed to be up by 3:30 am and out the door by 4am. It was brutal, but I adapted. I got to work on time every shift.
I’m not superhuman, I just needed the money. It was my job. That job gave me evidence that I could wake up earlier if I had to.
You’ve woken up early before, you can do it again. The more you do it, the more you’ll adapt to it. I will never be a morning person, but I could certainly suck it up if it means taking advantage of an optimal time to write. I treat it like a job.
Writing is not the first thing I do when I get up
When I say I wake up early to write, you might think that I get up and go straight to writing. I don’t. I wake up and do my morning routines first, the ones I would do if I was heading directly to work after. I’d wake up, get clean, walk and feed my dog, say hi to my wife, make a cup of coffee, and then, at last, I sit down to write.
My point here is to find your own routine. Waking up early doesn’t mean you need to spend every extra moment you get to write, it just means you get a headstart on the day, a little bonus time before you’re bombarded with other assignments.
One morning won’t make a big difference
If you wake up early for one day and expect to see significant results, you’ll be disappointed. You won’t get a lot in one hour. But if you build upon this habit, the hours add up.
There are days where you’ll wake up, spend the hour writing crap, and be exactly where you were before. Don’t be discouraged. Stick with the process.
Yes, you could have slept in and achieved the same amount. However, if you wake up one hour earlier every day, then over the course of weeks and months, you’ll see that your good days will greatly increase. From there, you’ll gain momentum.
These little headstarts add up. You might not see results after one day, but over the course of a year, you’ll notice.
Many writers talk about a morning routine. There is a reason why so many prefer it. By getting writing checked off the list immediately, we don’t carry that anxiety along with us all day. We don’t expend all our energy on lower-priority tasks.
As writers, we need to write and be creative so that the weight can be lifted. Some people exercise first thing in the morning to release the tension and feel normal. Some need to write. It’s not so much about productivity. Productivity is great, but it’s more about doing something for yourself as early as possible. You deserve days where you’ve written, so make sure it happens.
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I’ll admit this first, I’m not an expert on anxiety. While I do get stressed occasionally, I don’t suffer from anxiety in any chronic way. However, I recently read a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or CBT)[Amazon] and found some mindset techniques useful for dealing with my own household stress, such as sharing my creative work.
My creative work. I’ve put my heart and soul into it and the thought of someone disliking it tears me apart. Especially if I’m awaiting feedback from someone I respect.
The reason for anxiety is because back in the cave people days, you needed to be ready in case a sabertooth tiger jumps out of the bush and attacks you. In that situation, anxiety raises your heart rate, heightens your senses, and speeds up your breathing to help you stay alert.
Today, anxiety is still useful when you get caught in tiger territory, however, it’s not that useful when you’re sitting safely at home contemplating publishing your work. While the triggers are different, the reaction within you is much the same.
In the moments before, during, or after you’ve shared your creative work, you may feel your body firing up, preparing yourself for danger. But there’s no real danger. Yes, there is a possibility that your work will be negatively received, but it’s not a tiger, you’ll survive. These types of false alarms can cause you to panic, pull back, and hide your work from the world.
To do that is a disservice to yourself and the world. You’re preventing yourself from growth, both personally and in your craft, and you’re robbing an audience of a chance to discover you.
Okay, so here we are. Anxiety is a real barrier. Yet, with patience, practice, and the right frame of mind, you can overcome it by countering those reactive thoughts that trigger anxiety, which is what CBT is all about.
There are two types of reactive thoughts:
First are the thoughts you have when you jump to conclusions:
They will all hate my work.
They will laugh in my face.
They will make fun of me to their friends.
Someone will hate a passage and I’ll get canceled.
These types of thoughts lead you to the worst-case scenarios, catastrophes. The likelihood of someone reading your work and reacting in such a way is unlikely. Can it happen? Yes, it’s possible. But it’s equally likely that they’ll love your work, congratulate you, and share it positively. In either case, the reaction of others is not something you can control.
Accept it! Once you put it out there, it’s out of your hands.
To combat the negative thoughts, remind yourself that you’re merely jumping to an unlikely conclusion. You’ll feel pressure to hide your work, but hang onto it — push through — and share it, submit it, publish it. The more you practice going through this process of sticking with it, the less scary it will feel. Especially when you see nobody’s laughing at you.
Another thought that may flash in your mind and cause panic is that of misplaced responsibility. These thoughts cause guilty feelings about what you’ve created.
My career would be more successful if I wasn’t working on this novel.
I’d have better relationships with my friends if they didn’t think I was going to write about them.
I should’ve been taking care of my family instead of writing. Even though they are fine, I know they are resentful.
This type of thinking starts in childhood when parents or other adults blame or shame you for unrealistic expectations. Statements like “raising you is the reason we’re poor,” may have caused you to feel that the unhappiness or displeasure of others is your fault. That can certainly induce anxiety later in life and halt you from sharing or pursuing your creativity.
Much like how you handle thoughts where you jump to conclusions, to counter your thoughts on misplaced responsibility, you must accept that other people’s expectations of your work are their business, not yours. Then acknowledge that your writing is something that you do for yourself. It’s not harming anyone, it’s done in your own well-deserved time, and it’s an expression of who you are. There’s no pressure. It’s doesn’t have to win the Nobel Prize, spark a revolution, or cure cancer for it to be meaningful.
Should you need to, speak to those you care about or those who are dependent on you and explain how much writing means. They’d likely support that or at least, you would have started a conversation to build a healthier relationship.
Know that even if your boss confronts you about your personal projects, you can show him your performance report, or if your family is in need, you can take a break from what you are doing to help them. But they’re fine. Everyone is fine. All these issues are thoughts and are not real — when they become real, you’ll deal with them then.
Dealing with anxiety takes time and if you are feeling very overwhelmed, a professional, like a clinical counselor, can really help. With that being said, I encourage you to keep creating for the love of it, even when faced with the fear and stress of sharing your work.
Understanding the sudden thoughts that trigger your anxiety is the first step to countering them. At any stage where you find yourself jumping to conclusions or taking on misplaced responsibilities — stop, breathe deeply — accept that you’re only in control of yourself, counter the unrealistic expectations, and push through. It might never be easy, but it’ll get easier. Good luck!
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Here’s my relationship with learning: I love learning but I hate being taught.
I’m a kinesthetic learner which means that I don’t learn from reading, watching tutorials, or listening to instructions. I learn by getting my hands dirty: doing and making mistakes over and over again.
That’s why in an effort to get better at drawing, I decided to draw every Pokemon. It’s been effective because I’m doing this every day.
I like the analogy of learning as a dimmer switch. It’s not a light switch you could flick on and off. It’s not one moment you have no knowledge of it and the next moment you’re an expert. It’s a dimmer switch and it’s very gradual.
Every time you practice. Every time you experience it. You increase the brightness a little bit more. This analogy was explained to me from a Great Courses audiobook (Amazon) about vocabulary and that tends to be how we learn vocabulary. We don’t hear a word once, immediately add it to our own mental dictionary, and be able to use it in a day-to-day scenario, especially if the word is very foreign to us. So I really like that analogy.
Every time I draw, I try to make it one percent better, or I try to learn a new technique, or I try to get really specific and very detailed, or I try to be one percent faster. I don’t always succeed. Sometimes, I mess up and I just have to get through with it. That is a learning experience. When you mess up, that’s actually when you learn. When you try to make it one percent better you don’t always.
I like the process of making mistakes. I like the process of challenging myself and the fact that I’m doing this every day makes it feel like there’s no risk because tomorrow I’ll get to sit down and try again. I’m always more of a process over progress type of person. I believe progress will happen if you have a process down.
I’m learning new software. I’m learning new techniques. I’m learning to apply different aspects and combine them together. I started doing some animation. I learned Illustrator just a few months ago. I never thought I’d be able to understand the pen tool. Now, I feel like I got it down pretty good, so that feels like quite an accomplishment.
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The problem isn’t that all books are dull, it’s that you haven’t found the one you want to read.
Here’s something you can try
Set aside time to read and ONLY READ. I recommend starting with 30 min to 1 hour.
Find 4 to 5 books that you are interested in, in different genres.
Start reading…
When the first book gets boring, switch to the second book and KEEP READING.
Read, rinse, and repeat: Switch to another book whenever you want to stop reading. But whatever you DON’T STOP until your set time is up.
The next day, set time again to read those 4 to 5 books. See which book you finish first.
Hope this tactic helps you read more!
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Rest is important. It’s a time for your body and mind to refuel. However, when it comes to your productivity, rest can cause setbacks by breaking you out of your routine and rhythm. On one hand, you know that if you don’t stop, you’ll burn out. On the other hand, if you are to pause your project now, you might abandon it altogether.
While I cannot pick the perfect time for your to take a break from your work. Whenever I need an extended period to not think or work on my writing, I give myself a few requirements to consider to ensure that I’d return and not lose momentum completely. Here’s what has worked for me, and perhaps something you can consider before you take your next break.
Get ahead, but don’t stay ahead
One way I reward myself with some well-deserved time off is when I get ahead. Let’s say I have a simple goal to write 50,000 words a month. That means I’ll need to write approximately 1,700 words a day. If I have a day where I write 5,000 words, that gives me a few days to relax. As long as at the end of the month I reach 50,000 words, I’m good. You can, of course, scale this approach up and down as necessary.
I do this with timeline-type projects too. Let’s say I want to publish a blog post every week on Monday. If I want to get ahead, I’ll have the blogs prepared and scheduled for the next three weeks. This means I can now take two weeks of guilt-free time off and still have one week of running room.
As a productivity fiend, I sometimes want to get ahead and stay ahead, but the whole point of being ahead is so you can take a moment and catch your breath.
Work on a different part
Sometimes the best way to take a break is not stopping altogether, but rather focusing on another part of your writing process that you don’t usually work on. This can mean doing research, growing your professional network, preparing marketing material, or learning a different skill to enhance your writing whether it’s visual arts, music, or physical performance.
While you might be taking a break from the most critical part — writing and editing — you are working on the details that can end up enhancing your overall project.
Before you start a project, set achievable milestones along the way. These are goals that are fully in your control, such as finishing the first draft. Milestones that shouldn’t dictate your time to recharge are those that are out of your control such as getting 5,000 subscribers to your newsletter. But rather, one you could set is something like sending 5,000 invitations. You can’t guarantee you’ll get 5,000 subscribers, but sending it to 5,000 people will surely give you some results and it’s achievable.
By setting these milestones and then hitting them as you go, you can rightfully reward yourself with a break regardless of the outcome.
Often taking a break from a draft or a work-in-progress allows you to come back with some fresh eyes. If you are trying to grow an account, this allows you time to see your execution in action. It’ll take time for people to sign up or buy your product. Give them time. And while they are doing that, you can sign off and take a break.
No more than two days off
One way I monitor my productivity is to keep a calendar and mark the days I write or work on my personal projects. The goal for me is just to keep a streak going. Breaking the streak isn’t a big deal, I just have one rule: I’m not allowed to break for more than two days in a row. Keeping my work steak going is important, but when I take a break, breaking my streaks for “breaking” is essential to maintaining momentum.
I also feel that three days is the amount of time where something can become a habit, so to not work on anything for three days, I risk my rest becoming a routine. Therefore, a two-day break is the max I’d give myself before I jump back into a part of the project — no matter how small that part is. See tip number two on working on a different part.
Just take a break (and don’t worry about it)
I use the previous techniques so I can get rolling again after taking some time to chill. However, I believe that if you need a break you should take it, and if your project is something you are genuinely passionate about, then you will return to it regardless of how long or how many breaks you take because it’s something you want to work on. Don’t worry about momentum, you’ll likely feel a rush to go back to it even if it’s after a few days, weeks, or months off.
If you don’t want to work on it anymore, maybe quitting wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe you’d rather spend your free time working on something else. That’s perfectly fine as long as you are happy. Sometimes taking that break will give you a new perspective and show you that the project you were working on was a bit toxic. There is no shame in quitting a project like that.
Are you having a hard time motivating yourself to write or finishing your work-in-progress? Check out this YouTube playlist here or this video about quitting your projects.
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The power of an ‘ing’ word is that it creates a progression of time. “The hero is flying over the city,” is more immediate than “The hero flies over the city” or “The hero flew over the city. “Ing” words have the ability to put readers right there in the moment.
There are 123 words in this paragraph and 6 of them are “ing” words. But what’s more important is where Hemingway positions them. They are close enough together that the “ing” words can almost echo off each other, building tension, but far enough away so that it’s not overdone.
You see, “ing” words come with a price. First, “ing” inherently adds another syllable to your word which can affect the pacing. Secondly, if you overload a sentence with too many “ing” words too close together, the power of immediacy is dampened by the repetitiveness of the sound.
Take a look at this sentence:
Remembering her time climbing the steps, Jodie was listening to the paramedics upstairs suggesting removing her ailing father through the window.
Six “ing” words appear in this 21-word sentence:
We have “Remembering” a present participle, “Ailing” an adjective, “climbing”, “listening”, and “suggesting” as verbs tenses, and “removing” as a gerund.
Grammatically, this sentence can pass, but you don’t need to read it too many times to identify the problem that the “ing” words cause.
Like so much of life, moderation is key. By limiting the amount of ‘ing’ words within a time and space, you build tension with fluid pacing. It allows your words to stand out independently.
Take a look at this revised passage:
Jodie remembered climbing the steps as the paramedics upstairs suggested removing her sickly father’s body through the window.
We went from six “ing” words in a 21-word sentence to two “ing” words in an 18-word sentence. Now, some might call it a matter of taste, but the second version is objectively punchier, and dare I say, more dramatic. By swapping out “ing” words with words that end with “ed” or “ly”, and rephrasing certain ideas, you allow the sentence to flow smoothly.
Keep an eye out and an ear open for those that are bunched together. Experiment with the spacing of these words and don’t ever feel trapped by your word choice, there is always a way to fix it.
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Elliot Chan 