Sometimes when writing new materials, I feel like I’m moving in slow motion. Most of the time, the writing part is my favorite. I love flowing with new ideas. Stories seem to write themselves. So when it seems I am easily distracted and the story is barely moving forward, I change tactics.

Normally, I write on a laptop. I work on a document that has the rest of my book on it. But when things aren’t going so well, I go back to what I did before I had a laptop: writing with a pencil and a notebook.

I really prefer to write this way. It’s much simpler, and I love the feeling of interacting with a blank sheet of paper. It’s much more fulfilling to me to see my handwriting covering a piece of notebook paper than to cross to another page while typing on a word document.
It helps relieve pressure, too. I can’t scroll up and see the 300 pages of work I did before I got here, so I don’t worry about silly things I can fix later when I’m editing.

This method also brings me back to how I wrote as a child. It reminds me of how and why I fell in love with writing in the first place.

It’s not the most organized or efficient way to write. I’ll have to go back and edit the work, then type it into a computer. There’s certainly a reason why I changed tactics.

However, there is something to be said for going back to the beginning. Remembering the start gives new life when progress gets clogged up somewhere in the middle.