Consistency Means Returning

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Consistency doesn't always mean writing every day without missing a single day. Sometimes it just means coming back to your story again and again, even when life gets busy and even when unexpected things pull you away from it. So instead of hoping that you'll never need to take another break, I'd rather you set yourself up so that the next time you do have to take a break, you can come back and know exactly where to pick up and where to start.

Welcome And Today’s Goal

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Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, we're talking about how to get back into writing your novel after taking a break, whether that break was intentional or not. And I wanted to tackle this topic today because every writer will need to step away from their novel at some point. Sometimes it's because life demands it, so a chronic illness flares up or a new baby arrives or work takes over, whatever it is. And then other times you just simply get burnt out and need some rest. So you take a break. And honestly, that's probably the right move. But then fast forward to when you're ready to start writing again, and weeks or even months might have gone by since you last opened your draft. And suddenly it doesn't feel like taking that break was the best idea. So you pull it up, you scroll through a few pages, and then maybe the thoughts start to creep in, like, wait, where was I even going with this? What's happening in the story right now? I don't remember where I was. And because of that, maybe you feel like you need to reread your entire manuscript to get your bearings before you even start writing again. Or maybe you start thinking about all the writing time that you've missed and you feel just really pressured to catch up. Either way, before you know it, getting started again starts to feel like a huge undertaking. If you can relate, then here is what I want you to know. You do not need to make up for lost time or remember every single detail of your story before you can start writing again. Instead, the key is to make your return feel manageable. So you can take one small step, then another, and gradually build your momentum over time. So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through five steps to help you do exactly that. All right, so with that being said, let's go ahead and dive right in, starting with the very first thing I want you

Drop The Catch Up Plan

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to do. If it's been a little bit since you touched your manuscript, and now you're coming back after taking a break. And the very first thing I want you to do, or step number one, is to let go of the catch-up plan. So what I mean by this is that when you've been away from your draft for a while, it is very tempting to do the math on what you could have written if you never took that break in the first place. So let's say it's been about seven weeks since you touched your draft. Well, if you're like most of the writers I've worked with, your brain immediately starts doing the math, right? At 500 words a day, that's almost 2,500 words. I should be so much further along by now. That's the kind of math I'm talking about. And usually what happens is once you start doing that kind of math, it's very natural to want to make up the difference. So you make a plan of, let's say, writing 10,000 words in one weekend long sprint, or doubling your usual daily word count, or committing to waking up every morning at 5 a.m. to write a scene, even if you're not a morning person and even if you've never written that much or that consistently before. Right? So this is what I mean by that catch up plan. And we need to let go of that catch up plan. And that's because the problem with these kind of catch up plans is that they're built around the writer you think you should be, not the writer you are right now and the life you actually have right now. So you end up setting these goals that might not be realistic given your current circumstances or your current habits, right? And then when you miss that goal, which is likely, especially if you're still recovering or dealing with whatever caused the break in the first place, then you just end up feeling worse and more behind than you did when you came back from that break. And so it's kind of like setting yourself up for failure, right? And when that happens, it's of course very easy to step away from everything again. So this is why I want to encourage you to stop treating all those unwritten words as something you owe or something you need to catch up on. Because in most cases, the time that writers take away from their work isn't a failure of discipline or a failure of wanting to do the work, right? Usually we have to step away because there's a season where your health, your family, or your job or just everyday life needs more of you. Okay, so I want to say that again. It's not a sign of lack of discipline on your part or lack of will or want to finish your story. It's usually just a season in your life, and that's just part of being a human, right? So set the catch-up plan aside. Don't even do the math on how much you could have written in that time that you've been away. And instead of asking how far behind you are, start asking where you left off and start getting reoriented with your story. Which brings us to step

Reconnect Without Rereading Everything

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two. And step two is to reconnect with your story without rereading every single page. Now, after weeks or months away, it is very normal to feel a little disconnected from your story. You might remember the big picture, but feel fuzzy on the details of what was happening when you stopped. And when that happens, it is very tempting to start rereading your manuscript from page one to get everything back in your head. But rereading an entire draft or even a partial draft can take hours or even days, depending on your schedule. And when you do that, it's very easy to get pulled into editing along the way. Then before you know it, you are tweaking sentences in chapter two instead of getting ready to write something new. So rather than trying to remember everything, focus on just getting enough context to pick up where you left off. If you have an outline, read through it to remind yourself where your story is headed. If you don't have an outline, that is okay. Maybe just jot down whatever you remember about where you thought the story was going before you took the break. After that, I recommend reading the last scene or two that you wrote before the break to remind yourself what happened, where you left your characters, and what they were dealing with when you stopped writing. All right, so start big picture with an outline or even just write down a one-to-two sentence summary of your story if you haven't done something like that already. Just something to get the big picture back in your head, and then read the last scene or two to remind yourself of where you were at physically, mentally, emotionally when you left your characters. Okay, so the goal here is not to create a whole entire new outline or finish a new outline before you start writing or figure out the rest of your story before you're allowed to start. The goal is just to get you reacquainted with your draft so you feel ready to start writing again, which brings us to step number three.

Make The First Session Tiny

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And step number three is to make your first session back small and specific. So once you've reconnected with your story, it's time to actually start writing or start working on things again. And as easy as that sounds in theory, the first session back can carry a lot of pressure because if it doesn't go well, then it's very easy to take that as proof that you've lost your touch, that you're not cut out to be a writer, that your story sucks, right? Whatever it is. And that feeling can send you right back into taking another break. So that's why I recommend giving your first session back one specific job. And that could be as simple as writing just a few paragraphs. So literally, that's it. I don't want you to expect yourself to complete a whole chapter, a whole scene, whatever it is. I just want you to set a small goal where you're putting new words on the page. All right, so like we just talked about, ideally you will have read your last one or two scenes or chapters that you wrote. So now you know where your characters are. And I just want you to get in their headspace and think about, okay, what would they logically do next? Or what needs to happen next to move your characters forward towards whatever ending or next big event you're planning. All right. So just kind of think about that next step. And then before you start writing, I want you to jot down a quick note to guide whatever you're doing. So let's say that you have decided you're gonna just write five paragraphs, right? A very small and specific task. So before you actually start writing, I want you to just jot down a quick little note to guide yourself through those paragraphs. So for example, your note could look very simple, something like this. Jesse finally calls her sister back, planning to apologize, but her sister answers already crying about something else, right? So just very simple about kind of what those few paragraphs are going to accomplish. And a note like this gives you a very clear starting point, right? So you don't have to spend all your time or your entire writing session staring at the blinking cursor, trying to decide what to begin. You've already made that decision and now you're ready to start writing. And just to talk about the elephant in the room, if when you start writing it feels really clunky, then just let it be clunky. It really doesn't matter. If you can't remember a detail, just use placeholders like TBD town that Jesse grew up in, whatever it is, right? Just leave a placeholder and keep moving forward. Because the point of this first session back is not to write beautifully. It's not to end up with pages that have no mistakes or that are perfect, right? It's just to show up to your writing desk and show yourself that you can still move your story forward. All right, so keep your first session back after a break, short, specific, and low pressure. And then what we want to do is stack those small sessions together because one session on its own isn't enough to create momentum, right? So we want to start stacking small sessions to rebuild that momentum, which is step number four.

Stack Short Sessions For Momentum

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Now, we all know that momentum doesn't come from just one great writing day, right? It comes from returning to your desk in your story again and again. So the story stays fresh in your mind and each session picks up where the last one ended. So instead of waiting for long interrupted stretches of time, I recommend looking at the time you actually have this week, this month, whatever it is, and try to just plan your next few sessions around it. Remember that the key when you're getting back into writing after a long break is to plan small specific sessions. Okay. So maybe that means you have 20 minutes before the house wakes up on every Thursday, right? Or maybe you're gonna spend half of your lunch break writing or a pocket of time while the baby naps or while your kids are at soccer practice or whatever it is, right? We don't need long sessions to make progress. And short sessions, especially right now, really do count. So I want you to find some pockets of time to schedule for your writing so that you can start to rebuild that momentum. And I really want to stress here that small progress counts. So if you only write 50 words in a session or three paragraphs, whatever it is, that's still 50 words or three paragraphs that didn't exist yesterday. And if you're like a lot of the writers I work with, you'll find that a few short sessions in a row do way more for your momentum than one big push or weekend marathon where you're trying to write 10,000 words in a weekend. A few short sessions will do more for you than one big push like that ever will. So I want you to focus on stringing a few small sessions together instead of expecting any one large session of time to carry all the weight. And then once you're writing regularly again and once things feel like they're back to normal, then you can think about how to protect longer pockets of time and schedule longer pockets of time if that makes sense for you and your schedule. But either way, once you're writing regularly again, you'll also want to think about how to set yourself up for success when the next break in the future, which brings us to step number five.

Prepare For The Next Break

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So step number five is to plan ahead for the next break. Because let's be real, you'll probably need to take another break from your writing at some point. You might have a chronic illness that flares up again, or you might have a newborn that hits another sleepless stretch, or maybe a really busy month at work that just leaves no room for anything else. So the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate these kinds of breaks because again, they will happen. They happen to everybody. Everyone needs to take a break from their writing at some point, but you can make the next break and the next return to your writing easier than this one was. So, how do we kind of prepare and protect ourselves from the next break? Well, first I want you to keep whatever that you use to reconnect with your story that we talked about earlier in step two, whether that's an outline or some notes that you've jotted down about your big picture, whatever that looks like for you, keep that updated and keep it somewhere that you can easily find it. Okay, so next time you need to take a break, it's going to be somewhere accessible and it's going to be updated, which will help you dive right back in. And then I also want you to get in the habit of leaving yourself notes at the end of every writing session. And these notes could be very simple. So something like in this scene, Jessie is talking to her sister who just got dumped by her fiance and now they're planning a vacation to the Alps, right? Like it could literally be anything just so that you can come to your desk the next time you have a writing session and get right back in that headspace that you were in in the last session. All right. And then if life pulls you away unexpectedly, which again it will do at some point, you'll have your outline or that big picture glimpse of your story and the notes that you've been leaving yourself that will help you pick up where you left off without having to reconstruct everything from memory. All right, and then finally, I would like to encourage you to change how you measure consistency. Because consistency doesn't always mean writing every day without missing a single day. Sometimes it just means coming back to your story again and again, even when life gets busy and even when unexpected things pull you away from it. All right, so instead of hoping that you'll never need to take another break, I'd rather you set yourself up so that the next time you do have to take a break, you can come back and know exactly where to pick up and where to start. All right, so if you've been away from your novel for weeks or even months, I hope you'll remember that you don't need to make up for lost time, you don't need to reread every page, and you don't need to start over from chapter one. You just need a way to make the return to your writing manageable. So, like we talked about in this episode, I want you to let go of the catch up plan. You don't need to make up for lost time in one giant writing marathon. So let go of that catch up plan, find a way to reconnect with your story, and give your first session back one small job. Then once you've successfully completed that first session back, see if you can string a few short sessions together, maybe a few over a week or a month, whatever it is, and then set yourself up for success so that the next time you need to take a break, your return to the page is easier than this

Free Training Invitation And Wrap Up

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one was. And if you do try out the steps I shared in this episode and you still can't seem to make forward progress, then I want you to sign up for my free training called Why You Keep Getting Stuck and How to Finally Finish Your Novel. Because sometimes what's really stalling your momentum isn't the fact that you took a break and you just need to regain your momentum. Sometimes there's something about your process or your story that you need to figure out in order to move forward. So if this sounds like you, then I want you to sign up for my free training. The link will be in the show notes, and we'll talk all about what might be keeping you stuck as well as how to move forward again. All right, so that's all I have for you in today's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope your writing is going well, and I will see you next week.