Write Things: On Finding Your Writing Rhythm

Hello writers,

Welcome to the newest edition of the Write Things Newsletter!

Beginning this month, you’ll receive one content-rich newsletter designed to support your writing practice for the month ahead. Many writers need space and time to find their words — and their momentum. My hope is that this monthly rhythm gives you both.

I’m of the opinion that the most important thing we can do as writers is write. Genius, I know.

But we never finish what we never start. We can’t move forward without a next step. And our stories can’t reach who they’re meant to reach when they’re locked inside of us.

Whether you’re just beginning, finding your way back into rhythm, or deep in a draft, this is here to help you take the next step.

Let’s dive in.

Draft

Use these prompts wherever you are right now.

You might use one to spark something entirely new. You might use one to explore a memory you haven’t fully written yet. You might drop one directly into a draft you’re already working on and see what shifts.

Trust your instinct.

Set a timer for four minutes. Let your pen keep moving. Don’t edit. Don’t explain ahead of yourself. Stay in motion.

If you want to keep going when the timer ends, do it. But setting that small, certain window gives you something powerful: a contained space to play.

And in that play, you may find something you didn’t expect. Something honest. Something alive. Something worth returning to.

Here are four prompts — one for each week of the month.

Week 1: Write about a moment when something changed on the inside — something the world wouldn’t have noticed.

Stay inside the shift. Let us experience it before you explain it.

Week 2: Write about a place you were once afraid to go — physically or emotionally.

What made it difficult? What was waiting for you there?

Week 3: The room was empty.

Don’t plan. Just write what happens next.

Week 4: Someone is trying to finish something before someone else arrives.

What are they doing? Why does it matter? What complicates it?

Stay in real time.

Craft

One of the biggest impediments to moving forward with a story is the number of details we’re still uncertain about.

If you’ve gone searching for answers online, you’ve likely encountered terms like “story arc,” “acts,” and “beats.” These can be helpful tools for analyzing finished writing. But in the drafting stage, they often do more harm than good.

When held too rigidly, writing becomes mechanical. Deviations from the “rules” feel like errors. Creativity tightens. Expression stalls.

After all, you have to kill something in order to dissect it.

The promise of structure is enticing: If you follow this, your story will work. Especially when uncertainty feels loud.

But the more you evaluate your writing against an external standard, the harder it becomes to trust your own perspective.

So what’s the answer?

Trust the way you see it. The way you feel it. The way you imagine it.

Don’t begin by policing the story. Begin by discovering it.

If this is your first draft, it will unfold in ways you didn’t foresee. That’s not a problem — that’s creativity at work.

Keep it light. Keep it exploratory. Think of drafting as getting the puzzle pieces out of the box. The picture will change. Chapters may shift. Scenes may disappear. Good.

It means something real is forming.

Resist the urge to revise before you’ve moved forward. Going back too soon creates an endless loop of writing and rewriting. And please — don’t polish language prematurely. It’s painful to lose a beautiful metaphor because the story has evolved beyond it.

Change your expectations of the process.

You will not know everything.
You will not see every theme.
You may not know where the story is headed until you get there.

That’s normal.

The win is not certainty. The win is focus.

Some days the words will flow. Other days you’ll get a single sentence and question it. There will be long pauses. That’s fine.

If you keep showing up and giving your attention to the work, rhythm will come.

There will be good writing days and bad writing days.

The key is to make sure you have writing days.

The rest takes care of itself.

The only way your story will not get finished is if you choose to say “I can’t” or “I won’t.” Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time.

Try this this month:
Write the scene you already know must exist, even if you don’t yet know how it fits.

Focus

I imagine you began writing because you loved expressing yourself. Because something in you wanted to be explored, shaped, shared. So when the experience becomes heavy — when it starts to feel tense or joyless — something has shifted.

With all the uncertainty of the writing process, it is completely natural to feel overwhelmed. You wonder whether the draft is working, whether the quality is good enough, whether anyone will care, whether you can pull it off, whether readers will respond, how you might one day get it into the world. The questions multiply quickly.

Here’s what’s important to notice: many of the things you’re wondering cannot be known until you’ve actually written the story. You cannot know if it works until it exists. You cannot know how readers will respond to something you haven’t yet finished. You cannot know the full shape of a story that is still unfolding.

In that sense, the questions themselves are premature. And often, they are an ingenious strategy by our inner critics designed to get us to stop. If the work feels uncertain enough, heavy enough, risky enough, perhaps we’ll abandon it altogether.

When that happens, resistance shows up. We avoid the page. We switch projects. We revise endlessly. We look for another framework, another rule, another promise of certainty.

This isn’t a talent issue. It’s a perspective issue.

We’re trying to hold everything at once: the draft, the quality, the future reception, the marketing, the response of readers we haven’t yet met. The same thing happens in our lives. When we hold every responsibility at once — work, family, friendships, obligations at home — we overwhelm ourselves. The result is often paralysis. We either do none of it, or we rush through it poorly. And most importantly, we suffer while doing it.

My suggestion in these moments is simple: narrow your focus. Zoom in. What is the next thing you have to do? Not the whole book. Not the full revision. What is the next part of the story you could write? The next chapter? The next scene? The next line?

Then do that.

And if that feels good, do it again. 

If you are revising, what is the smallest section you can meaningfully work on today? If you are organizing, what is one chapter you can find a place for? Make the next step as small as it needs to be in order to take it. Then acknowledge that you took it. Because even the smallest step is better than no step — or worse, the decision to quit.

After all, if the experience is miserable, what’s the point? Writing began as an act of expression. It can remain that way if we allow ourselves to focus on what can be done today, done in the time we’ve set aside for our writing and trust that is enough. We wrote. And today, we can call ourselves a writer. 

Try this this month:
When you feel overwhelmed, ask yourself, “What is the smallest next step I can take?” Then take it.

Advance

Eventually, if you keep writing, a new question emerges. Not “Can I do this?” but “Is this working?”

The beautiful thing is that learning to answer that question is far less mysterious than most writers assume. In fact, it’s something you’re already doing every time you read.

When you read, you lean in. You lean away. You feel anticipation. Curiosity. Confusion. Distance. Immersion. You notice when you can’t wait to read the next line, and you notice when you start skimming. You are constantly experiencing engagement.

The shift is simply to become a little more conscious of that experience.

As you read, ask yourself: What am I thinking right now? What am I feeling? What am I anticipating? Can I articulate what is happening inside me as a reader?

If you can, you’re already halfway there.

The real growth happens when you look back and ask why. Why did that line pull me forward? Why did that moment stall? Why did I suddenly feel distance from the character? When you begin identifying the cause of your engagement — or your disengagement — you start to see how stories create experience.

The same applies to your own writing.

This is a revision strategy, not a drafting rule. You do not need to track engagement while you are creating. Draft freely. Follow instinct. But when you return to revise, read your work like a reader. Notice where you lean in and where you lean away. Then ask why.

Over time, something subtle begins to happen. You move from simply telling a story to crafting an experience. You become more purposeful. More precise. More effective in how you shape tension, immersion, and momentum.

You don’t have to do this constantly. Enjoy the books you love. Write the scenes that excite you. But when you find yourself loving a particular moment — or popping out of a story entirely — go back and examine it. Study the cause. Track the effect.

Eventually, that awareness transfers into your writing.

I recently demonstrated this process live — tracking engagement, identifying why it shifted, and determining whether the writing was creating the intended experience. If you’re curious what that looks like in action, you can watch it here:
https://youtu.be/6USUAkjlWgM

If you’d like to go further — to learn how to develop scenes, characters, and conflict using this lens, or to use point of view, dialogue, and tension to truly hook your reader — I’m teaching my annual Enhance Your Storytelling course in a couple of weeks.

It’s a 16-week live program designed to help you understand and apply techniques like these (and many others) so you can craft stories that readers can’t put down. We practice reading for engagement, we experiment with craft tools in real time, and you receive feedback that helps you see exactly what’s working in your writing.

The sixteen-year ELA teacher in me loves teaching this material. It’s immersive, practical, and a lot of fun. I’d love to have you join us.

Try this this month:
As you revise, track where you lean in and where you lean away — and ask why.

---

Wishing you and your stories all the best over the upcoming month.

Trevor