One of the biggest challenges to getting writing done is figuring out how to start. I hear this over and over again: “I just can’t get started.” Or, more precisely, “I just can’t get myself to start.”
There can be lots of reasons for this, and lots of solutions — my favourite is TURN OFF YOUR DAMN PHONE, closely followed by clearing your mind with Daily Pages and then setting a timer. But there is one solution that I never hear anyone talking about, and it’s all about what you do at the END of a writing session.
Leave a trail of breadcrumbs for yourself before you stop writing for the day. That’s it — very simple, and very powerful.
Here’s how you do it. Stop writing at least five minutes before you have to stop. This means you don’t just keep going til you’re about to be late for class or the school run or your next exciting meeting. Set a timer or an alarm for five minutes before your end-time.
When it goes off, consider your future self and take pity on him/her/them by writing some very clear, precise, bite-sized instructions for what to do next. Sort out the paragraph on page 4. Go back to the source on deli meats and make sure what I’ve written about baloney is correct. Makes sense of the two sentences I’ve highlighted in the conclusion. Try combining the sections on rainbows and fairies and see if it works.
Then, when you return, you have a place start! If you’ve given yourself a few options, like I did above, then you get to choose where to start, and no one likes being bossed around, even by their own past self. If your time is limited, you can choose the task that will be the quickest to complete. If you have longer, you can start with the meatiest instruction and really sink your teeth into it. If you are tired, pick the easiest one. And, if you arrive at your desk with different thoughts in mind — maybe you’ve just listened to a podcast or been to a talk that got your wheels turning — then you can start someplace else altogether. You are allowed to deviate from the list; it’s a tool, not a mandate.
Leaving your future self instructions lowers the bar of entry to getting started writing. You need to do less (often a LOT less) work to get back into things. You don’t need to figure out where you were, what needs to happen, where to pick things up. You KNOW, because you’ve told yourself, as granularly and tactically as possible. Think about what needs to happen next WHILE YOU’RE STILL IN IT, not when you get back to it.
Because how you finish is how you start.