The “Take a Week” Writing Technique

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, if you wait a week before writing something, you can write it well and quickly.

Here is a writing technique that works for me. Try it; it may work for you.

I think about something for a week. No great concentration, but thinking now and then, off and on, having conversations with myself in my mind.

Then I sit at the keyboard, and bang it out in an hour. Finished.

This works if I have a week. What if I don’t? I make a week. Sometimes I delay the due date. Sometimes I compress the things I do over a week (think now and then, talk to myself) into a day or an hour. That isn’t easy, but it works for me.

There is something about time. There is something about “mulling it over.” There is something about waiting until a writer is ready before writing. Wait for the right time.