The hardest part of any short story or novel, any piece of writing, is the first line. No matter what roadblocks you may run into later on, no matter how complicated the plot or how involved the characters, it’s that first sentence where you meet the most resistance. From there, it’s just a matter of momentum.
Have you ever had to push a stalled car out of the way? Once you get it rolling, it’s a lot easier to move. But that initial start is where you expend the most energy. Writing is the same way.
You have to GET going, but once you do, you’ve got momentum, and momentum will help you KEEP going. But once you HAVE momentum, you have to MAINTAIN momentum. Once you’ve started, write every day. Much like the example of the stalled car, it’s so much easier to keep going on a story once you’ve started. But if you start, then stop the car when you encounter a speedbump, getting started again is going to be so much harder. And now you’ve got this speedbump in front of you. You’ve already got momentum, use that to roll over the speedbump, ignore it and keep going.
William Faulkner said, “When my horse is running good, I don’t stop to give him sugar.”
Many writers, when they hit a part of the story that’s going to require research, will put a notation in there, something they’ll remember and can easily find again (I will usually mark a passage with *** on either side of it, then do a search for *** later on so I can find it again; this is called the bracket method, except I personally don’t use brackets), and they keep going, only coming back to this part much later, after they’ve completed the current scene or chapter. They’re following through on the momentum they’ve established, riding over the speedbump.
This is a case where an outline would be most beneficial. If you know where the story is going already, all you have to do is transfer that to prose and put it on the page. The outline is your momentum kickstarter. You’ve already done the hard part, figuring out the course of the story. But, again, once you’ve started, you have to keep going.
Another way to maintain momentum is to set a word count. But not a word count where you tell yourself, “I have to write 500 words in the next hour.” Instead look at your current word count, and go from there. For example, say your current story is at 4234 words. Say, “I have to get to 4300 words.” That’s 66 words. You can do 66 words. And chances are, once you’ve started, you won’t stop at 66. You may stop at 350 words. Then you’re at 4584 words. Okay, you have to write 16 words to get to 4600. But you won’t write 16 words, you’ll write another 158. Now you’re at 4742. Only 58 words away from 4800.
I’ve used this method to reach my 1000 words a day goal several times and it’s never failed me. But that’s to maintain momentum THAT DAY.
If you need something to help maintain momentum from one day to the next, a great trick is to stop in the middle. My writing time every morning is limited to whenever I get out of bed to whenever I have to start getting ready for work, so I don’t always have a lot of time (I overslept an hour this morning. Thank God I already had the day off), so sometimes what I’ll do is, if it’s getting close to time to stop, but the story is really chugging along—because I’ve established excellent momentum—I’ll look at the clock, decide how much further I think I can go, set a nice round cut-off point (“I’m at 4376 words … I can stop at 4500.”), and once I reach that point, I stop. Just stop. Even if I’m in the middle of a sentence. Even if that sentence only has one more word to go. I’ll finish it TOMORROW. But naturally I’m not going to sit down tomorrow and just write one word. I was right in the middle of a thought, I’m going to finish that thought. And since I’ve already got started for the day, I’m going to keep going until I hit the end of that scene, or until it’s time to stop and get ready for work. With any luck, when that day’s time is up, I’m right smack in the middle of a sentence again.
Maybe setting a 1000 word daily goal is a reach; not everyone has that kind of time every day. You can still maintain a DAILY momentum with, say, 200 words. The above paragraph, from “If you need something” to “middle of a sentence again” is 246 words. If you can do THAT on a regular, consistent basis for a year, you’ve got an 89,790-word novel. The key to momentum is not quantity, it’s all about consistency. Remember, the hardest part is starting. But once you’ve started, it’s so much easier to keep going. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, right?
You just need to START.