Why It's Good to Stop When It's Going Good
A favorite piece of writing advice? I learned it as a grad student during my MFA program. It’s simple: don’t finish a scene. Get up and walk away when you get to the high point of each writing session.
Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it. But other writers follow it too. Recently a post came my way from Substacker
(read ithere). He cited Hemingway who said, “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day. . . you will never be stuck.”
It’s totally true. And it’s not for everyone.
In his craft book, On Writing, Steven King talks about stopping his day’s work in the middle of a sentence. That’s a more radical idea. I usually finish my thought, but when I tried King’s approach, I did ache to get back to the writing the next day. My brain had to finish that sentence!
Whoever originated the technique, the gist is: Leave a door open for the next writing session by stopping when it’s going well.
I remember this as a painting student: if you continue past your high point, you’ll begin repeating what you’ve already done. Your eye gets tired.
I’ve concluded, for me, that each writing or painting day offers a certain amount of creative juice. If I take a break—or even stop for the day—when it’s flowing well, rather than when I’ve depleted my allotment, it creates fuel for tomorrow.
Not how I was raised
This is NOT how I was raised to approach work in progress. My practical grandmother, who took care of me and my sister while my mom worked full-time, had a motto about “carrying through.” It basically means, “Finish whatever you begin and finish it soon.”
I’ve dutifully followed that advice most of my creative life. I get a subtle thrill from wrapping stuff up. Why, perhaps, so many books of mine are completed and published.
But my grandmother’s belief also got in my way. I ignore the need for a break to refresh. I push past my high point and make a mess, just to reach that finish line.
Create a mental vacuum
I can’t remember how it happened happened, if I got a text or phone call, but one day back in my MFA years, I had to leave the laptop as I had just reached the high point of that day’s work.
All day, it made me crazy. I realized later the action of stopping created a mental vacuum, a kind of tractor beam that kept pulling me back to the story. Pretty simple physics, I know now, but back then I was just nuts about getting back to my work. I couldn’t, for at least 24 hours, and during that enforced break, my brain kept working on solving the creative problem of the scene. The piece I was working on followed me around the rest of the day, flooding me with ideas.
So I made notes. I jotted down the dialogue lines that ran inside my head. I sketched setting ideas. With no other options, I had to let it all simmer—and that gave me the valuable confirmation that Hemingway was right.
Leaving unfinished work in the middle of a high point makes the mind crazy. And that’s the point—make it chew over the scene all night, so when we get back to the laptop in the morning, there’s no chance of writer’s block.
Adding a question or two
Over the years, I’ve expanded this technique. I add questions before I quit.
It’s taken me a while to recognize the feeling that I’m about to hit my high point in a writing session. That’s when I take a break and think of a few questions to add to the end of the page I’m working on.
My questions are like creative prompts. They give my creative self stuff to work on while I’m away from the story.
Surprising yourself
Last year, this technique came in very handy when I was finishing my revision of my recently published novel, Last Bets. I needed some surprises for the ending. I had a great set up: a group of scuba divers goes out for one last dive before a big storm hits the island they’re vacationing on. I didn’t want them to die, but I wanted something to happen that would shake up any equilibrium between them.
I reached a high point in that day’s writing session just as I was describing the boat ride out to the dive site. Here’s where I stopped. (It was agony, truthfully, but very good things came of it.)
Each gust of wind tasted of salt and metal, smelled like rain. Pearl-grey, quilted rows of clouds ran above them, and the dark mass that draped the horizon lay noticeably closer. Enrico passed out steel lifelines to hook around the waist . . .
I took a little walk, got some water, let the dogs out. Then I came back to write these questions on the page I was working on.
Do they get in the water or turn back? Why? How to make this decision believable?
Does something happen underwater?
How does it irrevocably change Elly and Rosie’s relationship?
That last question was the kicker—the thing I couldn’t solve without surprising myself. And I knew continuing to write the scene would not bring those surprises.
After 24 hours, I came back to my desk. And wrote this.
As Elly put the regulator to her mouth and took a long breath, she felt a slight hesitation, a tiny catch. Like the air hiccupped on its way to her lungs. For a moment, worry prickled her arms, urged her to call across the deck, summon Rosie, ask for assurance. But Rosie, probably overhearing a guffaw from the bench of men, scowled even more fiercely.
The overnight simmering of this moment became the idea of some malfunction of Elly’s regulator, the underwater breathing apparatus that scuba divers use. The reg is life or death underwater. She’d get into trouble, she’d have to rely on Rosie in a new way. The outcome of that small scene change, the overnight simmering, created a new trajectory for the rest of the story. Including the surprise ending that I am still getting reader comments (very happy ones) about.
Such is the beauty of the pause, letting a scene rest, incomplete, while your creative self goes to work.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week, try the hard thing of stopping at the high point of your writing session.
First time is the most difficult. You may need help to remember to do this and not just keep going. So set an alarm on your phone or computer or write a Post-It to remind you.
Ask a writing partner to try the same exercise and report back to each other about how this goes.
Force yourself (I don’t say this lightly!) to set the writing aside for the day or at least several hours. Then see if re-entry is easier.
You may want to post questions to help you re-enter.
Consider: What told you the writing was at a high point? What clues did you get, internally or in your body, when it felt that way?