4 Expert Tips for Writing More in 2025
Highlights
- Confront the Mirror Monster, the voice in your head that says things like “no one will ever care about what you’re writing.” One tactic: Don’t reread what you’ve written until you’ve finished a Bad First Draft. Novelist Eileen Pollack calls this a “zero draft,” which I like because it sounds attainable. Just get something down, and then you can improve it.
- Stop downhill. Stop writing when you’re excited to keep going, not when you’re stuck — so when you reopen that doc, you have a clear next step.
- Set a timer. The other monster in your head might say “I don’t have time for this!” To vanquish this monster, try the pomodoro method. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Don’t let yourself Ctrl-T away from that doc until time is up.
- It’s just work. It’s sometimes helpful to view writing less as “creativity” and more as simply work. It happens one word and one sentence at a time. Henry Miller has a rule (quoted by Johnson): “When you can’t create, you can work.”