Writing Hack To Get The Flywheel Spinning
The Amplified Impact Podcast
December 20th, 2023
In this episode, I share my go-to hack for overcoming writer’s block: starting a writing session.
With about a million words written yearly, I’ve discovered the hardest part is the first 15 minutes.
My secret?
I either revisit my old pieces or borrow inspiration from someone else’s writing to jumpstart my own.
Syncing mind and body, this method helps me write naturally.
If you’re battling writer’s block, try this out and watch the words flow effortlessly.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Because you dread the heavy work. And the truth is, once you make it past that 15 minutes and you start moving, the work actually gets quite easy.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
I was doing the math on this the other day, and it turns out I write around a million words a year. Whether that’s through emails, it’s through, you know, social media newsletter, it’s YouTube scripts. If I’m working on a book, it all kind of works out to be around 3000 words a day, a little bit less than that, like 2006 or 700. And that’s a lot of words. But one of the things that I find really interesting is I’ve been doing that for years. There’s going to be periods where I definitely wrote way, way less than that, and then periods of time where I wrote a bit more than that. But the thing that’s always been true since I started writing back in 2012, 2013, this is over a decade now, is the hardest part of every single writing session is the first 15 minutes. Just getting that flywheel going from a dead stop, it requires a tremendous amount of activation energy.
And that period of time, that 1st 15, because it’s so hard and it requires so much activation energy, it makes it very easy to procrastinate and put off and say, oh, I’m not ready, I’m not there yet. Because you dread the heavy work. And the truth is, once you make it past that 15 minutes and you start moving, the work actually gets quite easy. The writing is not that difficult once you can get into the flow state. Generally speaking, it’s that 1st 15 where, what’s the word? You have to wade through the muck to get to the clear water. And one of the things that’s really helped me, just from a trick to jumpstart the engine, a little hack for you guys, is I start by rewriting word for word, the paragraph that I left off on yesterday. And this has a really interesting effect, which it helps me review the words where I was the day before, but it gets my fingers moving, it starts to sync my fingers with my brain without having to actually think about the words. And so what I find is just by doing that and kind of like jump starting with a task that doesn’t require my brain, but gets my fingers, my brain in alignment, by the time I do get to those new words that need to come out, I’ve already found rhythm.
And that’s the most important thing is like having the momentum that you can continue moving forward. Now, if you’re staring at a blank page, that’s no problem. In that case, I go back to a previous piece of writing of my own, or I go and find an inspirational piece of writing from somebody else that I want to kind of mirror and I just start writing that. I like to write my own stuff at this point because I have a particular voice and a particular way of thinking about things, and so writing out my own thoughts tends to jumpstart my thinking machine. But that’s just a really simple little trick to get the words flowing without having to do the heavy, heavy lifting of just starting from a dead stop. So if you want to be writing more consistently, try that out. Try doing for the first ten minutes, let’s say, where you just start typing word for word something that you already have written. I like to type and speak while I do, while I like to do those simultaneously, I find that syncs my mind, my body, everything, and it helps me write in my most natural speaking voice, so give that a shot.
I find the reason that stops most people from even getting the writing is because they can never quite get through that first little bit. They can never get over staring at the blank page. So try that little trick and see if it works out for you guys. And that’s going to do it for me. Hope you guys enjoyed. We’ll catch you all back around these parts tomorrow, but till then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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