“I’m just trying to make progress, like forward motion. I’m trying not to overthink it,” a client recently told me during a coaching session. She had been struggling with consistency, finding herself spinning her wheels when she sat down each day, unsure where to pick up the thread of her story.
This conversation revealed a pattern I see repeatedly with writers: they’re focusing so much on hitting daily word count goals that they’re sabotaging their ability to maintain momentum from one writing session to the next.
The End-of-Scene Trap
During our session, my client described her current routine: she would work until she reached a natural stopping point—usually the end of a scene or chapter—then call it a day. This seemed logical to her. After all, wasn’t it better to complete a thought before stopping?
But I could see the problem immediately. She was essentially creating a brick wall for herself every single day.
When you stop at the end of a scene, you force your future self to solve the hardest part of writing: what happens next? You’re asking tomorrow’s writer to make a creative decision from a cold start, with no momentum to carry them forward.
“Don’t leave off ever at a scene or chapter end,” I told her. “It should be hard.”
The Counterintuitive Solution
This advice sounds counterintuitive, but it’s based on a fundamental truth about creative work: the most challenging part isn’t continuing something that’s already in motion—it’s starting something new.
When you stop in the middle of action, when you know exactly what the next few beats will be, you create what I call a “momentum bridge.” Your future self doesn’t have to solve problems; they just have to execute a plan that’s already in motion.
Think of it like a relay race. You don’t want to hand off the baton when you’re standing still—you want to hand it off when you’re both running at full speed.
The Two-Sentence Rule
My client had developed another problematic habit: spending significant time re-reading previous work before starting each day. She thought this was necessary to “get back into” the story, but it was actually undermining her efficiency.
“You can only reread a max of two sentences,” I told her. This forces writers to trust their momentum instead of spending precious creative time reviewing what they already know.
The two-sentence rule serves multiple purposes:
- It prevents you from falling into editing mode when you should be drafting
- It forces you to rely on the momentum you’ve built rather than perfect recall
- It keeps you moving forward instead of circling back
Strategic Session Planning
Rather than focusing solely on word count, I encourage writers to think strategically about their entire writing session. The goal isn’t just to produce words—it’s to set up tomorrow’s success.
This means:
Know Your Next Few Beats You don’t need to know how your entire story ends, but you should know what happens in the next scene or two. When my client said she often stopped writing because she “didn’t know what happens next,” we identified this as the core problem.
Start New Scenes During Your Session, Not Between Sessions If you’re going to transition from one character’s perspective to another, or from one location to another, do it in the middle of a writing day when you have momentum and creative energy. Don’t save these transitions for tomorrow when you’ll be starting cold.
Leave Yourself Breadcrumbs Sometimes I have clients write a sentence or two into their next scene—not because they need to hit a word count, but because they need to create a clear path forward. As one client put it, “I try to think of what will happen next” before ending each session.
The Hemingway Connection
This approach builds on Ernest Hemingway’s famous advice about stopping while you know what comes next. But there’s a crucial distinction between knowing what comes next and having started what comes next.
Hemingway talked about stopping when you know what will happen. I’m suggesting you go one step further: start what will happen, then stop when it’s rolling but not complete.
My client discovered this principle naturally during one particularly productive week. “I just started writing a lot,” she said. “I got a lot of writing done this week.” When we analyzed what had worked, it became clear that her best days came when she left scenes in progress rather than trying to complete them.
Managing Creative Energy
There’s a crucial element of energy management in this approach. Many writers think they should exhaust their creative reserves each day, writing until they have nothing left. But this is like sprinting a marathon—unsustainable and counterproductive.
“There’s this Hemingway thing where it’s like when you write you take the water down in the well,” I explained to my client. “And if you take down the water all the way to the rocks, it takes longer for the water to fill back up again.”
The goal is to use your creative energy productively while preserving enough momentum to carry into tomorrow’s session.
The Overthinking Problem
Writers often get trapped in their own analysis. My client had been trying to solve complex plot problems during her daily writing sessions, which left her feeling stuck and frustrated.
“I think I’m just like overthinking it,” she admitted. “And I guess I would just say like follow the characters and not your own figuring out,” I advised.
This is where the strategic stopping point becomes crucial. When you stop in the middle of action, you’re forced to focus on what’s happening rather than what should happen. You follow the scene’s momentum rather than trying to engineer perfect plot mechanics.
Practical Implementation
To implement this approach:
Set Minimum Word Goals, Not Maximum Ones Instead of saying “I’ll write 500 words,” say “I’ll write at least 250 words.” This removes the artificial ceiling while providing a concrete floor.
Identify Scene Boundaries Pay attention to when you’re moving between scenes, locations, or character perspectives. These are your danger zones for stopping.
Practice the Mid-Scene Stop When you feel yourself approaching a natural ending point, push through to start the next scene. Write just enough to establish direction, then stop.
Trust the Process This approach feels wrong at first because we’re conditioned to think completion equals progress. But progress in serial creative work is about sustainable momentum, not daily closure.
The Compound Effect
Writers who master strategic stopping report a transformation in their relationship with their work. Instead of dreading the blank page, they look forward to continuing stories already in motion.
My client experienced this shift during our work together. What had felt like “forcing herself through” became a more natural flow between writing sessions. The story started moving forward with less resistance because she wasn’t constantly having to overcome inertia.
The next time you’re tempted to finish that scene before calling it a day, try stopping right in the middle instead. Leave your characters in motion, your dialogue half-finished, your action sequence building toward its climax.
Your tomorrow self will thank you for the head start.
Struggling to maintain momentum in your writing practice? My coaching helps writers develop sustainable systems that build momentum rather than fighting against it. Contact me to schedule a consultation.
