Keep Going
Topic: Keep Going
Let?s say you?ve done all of your homework and you?re ready to start writing. You know what you want to write and you have a plan for writing it. You sit and the computer and the words come. You?re moving along quite nicely when all of a sudden words just gush forth. The gush is welcome except that it isn?t the exact path that you had previously outlined. What do you do? Don?t stop the flow!

If the words are coming that easily, let them come. They can always be moved later. As long as the words continue, go with them. It may be what you?ve just written will be better than your original plan. If not, they can be moved to another area of the document or to another document completely. They may even provide the foundation for a totally separate work. Nine out of ten times when this happens to me, I am able to use what I wrote. Never turn off the fountain, though, when it offers a wealth of words.

Instead, learn to use your word processing program to your advantage. Take advantage of the cut and paste feature. Move the words or paragraphs you?ve just written to another place. You might move them to a blank document until you know whether you can use them. Please, please, remember to save your work often. Save the document you?re working on and save the piece you moved. It is always better to be safe than sorry. You wouldn?t want to lose that valuable work should the computer fail.

To this day, I still use the backspace key to fix mistakes. I backspace over everything I just typed, erasing letters and words, to re-type something very similar. I am consciously trying to break myself of the habit. It is so much more efficient to use the arrow keys or the mouse to return to the spot where a letter needs to be added. I can save myself the retyping if I would remember to do this. I can also go back after the fact and fix these errors if I would do a better job of proofreading my own work.

Fixing errors after the fact allows your flow to continue without interruption when you?re writing. The first priority is to get it down. If you stop too often to fix the little things, chances are you?ll lose the train of thought that got you going in the first place.

There are three things, then, to consider today. 1) Never interrupt a flow of words even if they are not exactly what you wanted. 2) Be flexible enough in your plan that these outbursts can be worked into the piece. And, 3) know how to use your software efficiently so that you have the advantage of the first two considerations.