There is a classic writing tip that basically says “keep your hand moving when you are writing”.
What this is all about is the difference between writing and editing.
A lot of people try to edit their writing as they go along and that not only slows down your writing considerably but it also drastically alters its flow, especially the flow from your subconscious.
There is the classic image still being thrown around of the tortured writer suffering for their art.
Picture someone sitting at a desk with just a lamp lighting the one area that they are writing in. They are sweating and trembling with the effort of getting things down onto that screen or onto that paper.
There is only one way that a writer could have anywhere close to that amount of anxiety and stress when writing, and that would be if they are monitoring and editing their writing as they go along.
If they are doing this, it’s pretty much guaranteed they are not flowing along – in fact they are most likely experiencing writers’ block or something along those lines.
So with the idea of writing motivation keep moving, your hand keeps moving on the paper or else your fingers keep continuously typing, or you keep continuing to dictate pretty much without a pause.
All of those would qualify for the “keep moving” instruction. This is such a simple thing that it is deceptive in its simplicity.
You may ask yourself “How could just deciding that I am going to keep moving with my writing solve the anxiety, and writer’s block etc etc”?
Well, for two reasons. One is that the mere decision to keep your hand moving forces your mind to keep outputting no matter what. This forces out the editing part of your mind. The two of them cannot exist in the same space in this scenario.
The other part of this is the psychological part. You have decided beforehand that you’re going to keep your hand moving and so as a result there’s absolutely no way to have this feeling of angst or anxiety or whatever it is that you normally feel when writing because it’s simply has to be given up in order to allow your hand to keep moving.
“But what if all I am writing is junk!”, you may wonder.
Well this is a simple case of it really just ain’t going to happen. If you know anything about your subject at all, or have any kind of passion about your subject, you will get past a certain point after you’ve been keeping your hand moving for a few minutes where there is definitely some good things coming out with your writing.
In fact the anxiety might go the other way, where do you are noticing your writing and saying “Oh man this is really good I hope it doesn’t stop” or something like that.
But it will be okay, simply because you are not going to stop.
So part of the trick with this keeping moving while writing is that you have already assigned yourself beforehand a set period of time that you are going to write without stopping,or with keeping your hand moving, whichever way you’d like to put it.
This actually has another major benefit, which is getting rid of a possible feeling of
“Oh man this is weird that I am writing just keeping my hand moving this is strange I don’t know what’s happening!” That sort of thing.
But if you have decided beforehand “Oh I’m going to do this for 10 minutes or 15 minutes” whatever it is you’ve decided, then it’s easy enough to just say: I can endure this for this set period of time no matter what.
It’s only x number of minutes after all.
So give it a try if you haven’t already. This will definitely jack up your writing motivation, to keep moving.
Keep that hand moving, keep that mouth moving, keep those fingers moving – however it is that you do it just keep moving and it’s almost guaranteed that you are going to be leaving a huge amount of whatever writing baggage you may have behind in that period of time that you’ve assigned to yourself.
Good luck and let me know how it works out for you!