Tried a 10-minute freewriting sprint before editing and my draft quality jumped way up

I usually dive straight into fixing typos, but last week I set a timer and just wrote nonsense until it went off. The garbage writing cleared my head and I caught 3 plot holes I missed before. Has anyone else used a warmup ritual like this to get past the editing block?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia2622d ago

Did you just describe my entire writing process without knowing it? I do a similar thing where I scribble out grocery lists and kid schedules before I even open a doc. It's like my brain needs to dump the boring stuff before it can focus. But honestly, @john_fisher, the worst warmup I ever did was when I forgot my timer and just wrote "I hate editing" for 10 straight minutes. At least it cleared out the grumpiness, right? Plot holes stayed hidden though.

john_fisher3d ago

I heard a podcast where a writer swore by doing 3 minutes of "ugly copy" before any edit session, said it stopped her from overthinking. Sounds like it works for you too.