Starting from Where You Left Off

Like most creative writers, I have a lot going on in my life that isn’t related to the story I’m penning. First, there’s the repetitive work at my day job, then household chores like dirty dishes, shopping, cooking, paying bills, and finally, the shameless attempt to stay in touch with friends and relatives.

When I sit down to add another page or chapter to my story, I stop all other activities in an effort to re-enter the fictional world that mostly lives in my head. But too many times I’ve found that transition difficult, if not impossible.

For instance, what does the world of a hot teenage sorcerer have to do with mind-numbing business strategy meetings and mopping the floor? Nothing.

And there lies the rub.

How can I effectively switch gears, and worlds, in the small amount of time I get to write? Most days my schedule allots me forty-five minutes to continue working on my novella. I find the spot where I stopped writing last time and there I sit, staring at words and sentences, not sure how to resume. The fervor with which I wrote last time has left me and I don’t have much time to get it back.

What should my teenage sorcerer do now? How does he feel about the dead witch? Who should he talk to? Don’t look at me… I’m lost.  

Unfortunately, when this happens I reread the last chapter in an attempt to evoke the mood I had in my last writing session. This should work, yet being a retired English teacher I can hardly read without editing, so I re-edit the last pages or chapter. The editing process feels productive, but it really isn’t because this backtracking steals much of my paltry writing time, and in the end, my story contains about the same word count it had when I sat down.

After struggling with this problem for a few years I finally devised a solution of sorts. At the end of each writing session, before I close and walk away, I take 30 seconds to ‘prime the pump’ for the next writing session. In the old days, travelers had to use some of their precious water to ‘prime the pump’ so it could produce more water. Each user needed to leave some water in a container for the next user—not for drinking, but for them to pour into the pump to get it going again.

To get me back into my story I leave a deliberate ‘primer’ in the form of a question. Say, in my last writing session the hot young sorcerer successfully overpowered an evil witch, but he still has ten chapters ahead of him before he’ll succeed in saving the town from devastation. To help prime my imagination, I ask a timely question about the protagonist, the antagonist, the homeless waif, the ineffective mayor, or the missing sacred package—something I would have written about next if my last writing session hadn’t been cut short—a question with key words or phrases designed to evoke sufficient emotion to ‘prime’ my imagination the next time I sit to write.

After I write the question I really do need to leave before I’m tempted to answer it right then. Like the jar of water, it needs to be left behind for use another day, when it will hopefully return me to the state where I was when I stopped writing.

As writers, our reaction to a question is to readily conceive of an answer. Thus, when we’re prompted by a question, it’s easy for us to write two-thirds of a page without having to think much, certainly without having to backtrack for half an hour.

Responding to this ‘primer’ question quickly immerses me in the story’s plot and characters, so instead of re-editing previous pages, I’m composing new stuff, adding to my word count, and drawing ever closer to the conclusion.

Some of you may already use a tool like this. If not, I hope you give this one a try.

Write on!