Another Way to Reach a Flow State Every Time You Write
What if I told you there’s a way to reach a flow state nearly every time you sit down to write?
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Search Results for: flow
How Do You Know You’re in Flow?
You’ve probably heard before about writers reaching that sublime state of “flow” where nothing exists but the story they’re telling, and they feel a deep satisfaction when they’re done. But if you’ve never reached that state of flow yourself, you might not be sure about what it really means. I can reach a state of
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Tailor Writing Sprints to Maximize Flow
Writing sprints, as reintroduced by Chris Fox in his book, 5,000 Words Per Hour, is one of the most useful tools for increasing your hourly word count. I use them regularly to increase my words per hour rate. I don’t use them all the time, for a number of reasons. I will go back
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Why Writing Feels So Damn Hard (Sometimes): It’s Not You, It’s Physics
Creative inertia is real. Whether you’ve stepped away from your novel for five minutes or five months, restarting always feels harder than continuing. It’s not a personal failing—it’s physics. Here’s how to beat the resistance and get back into flow, one “Just Start” at a time.
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Writing Hack: How One Author Wrote 25,000 Words on Her Phone—and Why You Might Want to Try It
We talk a lot around here about optimizing your writing life, especially when things aren’t ideal. Whether you’re juggling kids, caregiving, a full-time job, or just sheer burnout, sometimes the biggest enemy of progress is the myth that “real writing” only happens under perfect conditions.
Turn Off Editing and Spelling While You Type. And Why.
Recently, I was forced to replace my laptop. Not because of a catastrophic hardware failure, or because it fell into a vat of coffee (although, give it time). No—because the space bar stopped working. Yes, the space bar. That humble, workhorse of a key. Turns out, if you can’t make spaces, you can’t make anything
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Hauling the Bricks
This site is dedicated to productivity. Writing productivity, to be specific. There are hundreds of hints, tips, tricks, and hacks on PIFW to help you write more, write faster, and write better. Beyond this site there is trillions of posts, books and essays with golden nuggets of wisdom and experience that can help you get
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The Tiny Time-Saving Trick That Adds Up to Hours of Extra Writing
Ah, keyboard shortcuts—the secret sauce that transforms a writer’s workflow from a clunky tricycle ride into a sleek, high-speed chase. If you’re still dragging your mouse around like it’s 1995, it’s time for an upgrade. Embracing keyboard shortcuts isn’t just about shaving seconds off tasks; it’s about reclaiming your creative flow and keeping those brilliant ideas from evaporating while you hunt for the “Paste” option.
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Dash It All! A Writer’s Guide to Em-Dashes, En-Dashes, and Manuscript Dashes
Ah, the dash. That versatile little line that writers love to use—sometimes too much. Recently, I was asked to assess an ebook prepped for sale. There were many formatting errors in the book, most of them arising because the author, a long-time trad published writer, was making the transition to indie. They knew standard formatting
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Writing Through Disfluency: How to Embrace the Grind and Keep Moving Forward
Writing is hard. Some days, it’s staring at a blank page until your soul starts to shrivel. Other days, it’s forcing words onto the page that feel as clunky as a toddler’s first steps. This difficulty, though, isn’t a bug in the system—it’s a feature. What you’re experiencing is disfluency, the grinding friction that comes when creativity refuses to flow like a perfect algorithm. But here’s the kicker: disfluency isn’t just a hurdle to clear; it’s the point of the creative process.
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