Finally hit 30 pages of a novel draft I've been avoiding for 6 months

I got to page 30 of my draft yesterday, which doesn't sound huge, but I'd been stuck on page 14 since March. What finally worked was writing 2 pages a night on my phone during my lunch break, no editing allowed. Has anyone else broken a stall with a dumb time limit like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

miller.rowan1mo ago

Exactly the same thing happened to me with a short story I was stuck on for months. I told myself I could only write during the 15 minutes I had to wait for my coffee to brew in the morning. Pure time limit, no phone, just a notebook on the counter. Got 12 pages done in a week that way. The weird part is that not being able to edit makes you stop second guessing every sentence. You just push forward and fix it later, and somehow the story starts moving on its own. It's like your brain needs a stupid rule to trick itself into letting go.

ninaowens1mo ago

Friend of mine did the same thing with a digital timer app. Set it to 20 minutes, closed all tabs, and just wrote whatever came out. She said the timer ticking made her feel like she was in some kind of contest with herself. Ended up finishing a whole draft of a novel that had been sitting half done for two years. She still laughs about how the stupid alarm sound now makes her brain flip into writing mode.