Sarah-Beth Watkins

As a creativity coach, I advise writers to chunk their ideas down.

This is a well tested NLP technique that can help you to make your writing seem more realistic and more doable.

One of my clients recently told me that he had an idea for a book but it would be an in-depth scientific book that would mean a lot of research and he just didn’t know where to start. I asked him to break down his idea into steps so he had a list that read something like – plan chapters, do research, write a proposal, get an expert to write the introduction, find quotes from the professionals, and so on. Then I asked him to take each one of these steps again and break it down. So for planning chapters, he would write chapter titles, work out the number of chapters, decide on the focus of each chapter, etc. I asked him to pick one and commit to it during the following week. He chose writing the chapter titles but this was enough of a smaller task to make him believe he could manage the whole project and within the week, he had actually planned out a chapter list, titles and the focus for each chapter. Sometimes starting a project can be the hardest task of all but by chunking down what seems to be an insurmountable body of work into manageable pieces, it can help you to focus on developing and ultimately completing that project.

Creating Your Writing Ritual
Once you have decided on your focus, the project you are going to undertake, you have the extra job of focusing on it at any given time.

Many writers have a ritual that they go through before giving their complete attention to the work in hand. It could be lighting a candle, doing a visualisation or spending a few moments deep breathing to calm the mind. It could be chucking out the cat, drinking a cup of coffee whilst looking at yesterday’s work or turning off the phone and turning on the computer. Whatever it is, it signals that now is the time to write.

Create your own ritual that tells you that this is your writing time. It’s not for anything else. It’s for focusing on your project. When the ritual is over, it’s time for work.

Sarah, a fiction writer, said, “I live near an old bookstore and they do the best coffee! I start my writing day by sitting amongst other writers and readers, notebook at the ready. I think about what I want to get done today and make any notes for plot points, characters or settings I want to include in my current story. Then I go home and with no excuses, turn on the computer and get started.”

And Sarah Zama, a fantasy writer and illustrator, has an interesting way of starting her writing sessions. “All the main characters of my story have their own song. A song that for some reason makes me think of them. Before I start writing, I play the song connected to the character that will appear in that day’s writing. It helps me get going in the right frame of mind.”

Whatever way gets you in the writing mood, use it to focus on your intentions for the day.