Jan 13 2009
I Failed to Follow a Hemingway Technique and Paid the Price
I have been using this Hemingway technique for years and it has worked wonders for my content creation.
The technique is when your writing is going good, you don’t write away to completion. You stop at a point where you know what’s coming next. You save the rest for the next day.
In this way, you will easily pick up from where you left when you restart your writing the next morning.
Of course Hemingway was talking about fiction writing – novels, specifically. I’ve used his technique for fiction writing and every morning I’ve gotten off to a good start.
Lately, I’ve been writing mostly non-fiction for the web and was wondering whether I could put the same technique to use. The pieces I’m writing now are mostly 400 to 500 words.
After some reflection I did a little modification to the technique.
I would outline the article I would like to write the next day.
Then I write the opening paragraph and stop at the point where I know what the second paragraph is. So, the next morning I can easily pick up from where I left. It works because the subconscious would have figured the rest of the content while I’m asleep. The best part is I can’t start typing away the moment I sit at the keyboard.
Last night, for some reason, I did not prepare an outline; much less write the opening paragraph. So, I have to pay the price this morning.
Time is going to be spent starting the engine and warming it up before I can get going. And much more effort will be needed to get going, all because I didn’t put the engine on standby mode the night before.
That’s the trouble with most of us. Sometimes we just fail to use the powerful tools available to us.
