The Warm-Up: Planning Your Writing the Day Before

Like exercise (theoretically), writing needs to happen daily. One way to facilitate the process is by planning the next scene and how you'll write it. Hemingway used to stop writing before he finished a scene, some say before he finished a sentence. Another approach is to scan what you're planning to write next, consider how you'll approach it, and make notes on what you'll say and how you'll say it. Then when you return to the work, you have something to start with, like warm-ups before exercise or preheating the oven so that it's ready to bake when you're ready to cook. Preparing what you want to work on and how you'll approach it greatly eases the transition into your writing time and speeds the effort.

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that everyday when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck," from, Ernest Hemingway on Writing.

To put today's musing into action, check out the writing tip at the top of the list and let me know how it goes.