KickStarting The Writing Process

Dear Dead Beat,

I have just taken an extended Christmas and New Year's break from writing and am finding it hard to get kick-started again. Any advice?

Dead Beat

Dear Dead Beat,

You have come to the right person. KickStart is my middle name. Pull out whatever it is you were last working on and read it over. Read it aloud. Get a feel for it again. If you were working on something long, read a lot if not all of it. If you were working on something shorter, you may want to read several pieces you recently wrote. Then if you have a dog, take it for a walk. Preferably, take it for a long walk. If your dog is short, take several dogs...

So much depends on where you were in the process. If you are still working on a draft of a story, poem, novel, then once you have the feel for it carry on. If you have come to the end of a draft, then begin the rewrite. If your last piece was already finished, then you are fooling yourself.

The key is getting the feel of the piece to return. Reading aloud, repeatedly if necessary, will aid immensely with this.

Most importantly, get back into your writing routine. (If you don't have one, you are doing yourself and your writing a great disservice.) The pattern of writing will then return more easily.

And oh yes, lay off the rum sodden eggnog.