I don’t know about you, but I struggle to write on Mondays. There are always so many details to catch up on, emails to respond to, meetings to attend.

But for me, last week was a pretty terrible week for my writing. I had way too many late nights cranking out words to make my word count goal. I procrastinated way too much. And I’m determined to have a better week this week. So I'm implementing one writing tip in my rhythm this week, and it might help you, too.

The Key: Preparation

One of the things I do when my writing isn’t going well is I try to get smarter about how I prepare. I always find that when I have a plan, when I know what I’m going to write, it makes the writing so much easier.

And to do that, today, I want to give you a quick writing tip that you can use at the beginning of your writing week to make the most of every single writing session that follows.

This morning, I'm creating a quick outline of all the chapters I’m going to write this week.

I use Scrivener, so for me that looks like creating a few new documents, and then writing just two to five bullet points for what needs to happen in that section or chapter. If you use Microsoft Word, just put those bullet points at the bottom of your document.

You don’t need to have a rigorous outline here. Just jot down a few bullet points so that when Thursday comes and it’s time to write, you feel like you know what you need to do.

Not sure what to note in your bullet points? Think about the major choices your character will have to make in this scene/chapter/sequence/act. What crisis moments will they face? Include those in your bullet points.

A Psychological Shortcut

From a psychological perspective, this also gives your subconscious some time to think ahead and start to come up with ideas for each of these sections.

I find that when I prime my subconscious I always comes up with better, more unique ideas than if I try to come up with something in the moment.

That's my Write Practice writing tip for you today. Mondays are tough for writing! But if you’d like to have a better writing week than the last week, I hope you’ll give this writing tip a try.

How do you prepare for a week of writing? Let me know in the comments.