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Whether you are writing for 15 minutes or all day long, there's one essential task in the last five minutes of your writing that will save you time and speed your progress. Five minutes before you stop writing, make a list of your next thoughts and ideas for continuing your writing.

I discovered this when I returned to something I'd written a few weeks earlier. My last sentence had been, "There are at least three ways to explain this phenomenon." I had stopped writing there...and subsequently could not recall the three reasons I had intended to describe next. When I did finally remember them, I wasn't sure they were the same three I had originally identified. Maybe there were really six good reasons. I'll never know.

Recall from the first posting that you use different cognitive processes when you write about your topic than when you just think about your topic. So once in the flow of writing, your mind is working in ways that often lead you in the direction you need to go. You can't always know when you sit down to write what you will write. The process of writing brings you there. So after you're been writing, when you must stop, make a list or an outline or use stream-of-consciousness writing* of the ideas that are likely next steps. The next day when you start writing, review this list or stream and determine if continuing with those ideas is the best way to go.

When we think about the flow of writing, the term "flow" as Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described it is relevant. "The task at hand draws one in with its complexity to such an extent that one becomes completely involved in it" (2003, p. 40).Can you recall a time when you have been writing and you've gotten "in the flow?" Csikszentmihalyi reports that this flow is accompanied by up to eight conditions. And although he was not specifically describing the experience of writing, most of these eight are clearly what we strive for in our writing:

• Goals are clear

• Feedback is immediate

• Balance occurs between opportunity and capacity

• Concentration deepens

• The present is what matters

• You feel in control

• Sense of time is altered

• Loss of ego

For example, when Csikszentmihalyi describes the third one, the balance between opportunity and capacity, he writes: "It is easier to be completely involved in a task if we believe it is doable. If it appears to be out of our capacity we tend to respond to it by feeling anxious....Attention shifts from what needs to be accomplished - the anxious person is distracted by worries about the outcome.... The ideal condition can be expressed by the simple formula: Flow occurs when both challenges and skills are high and equal to each other" (p. 44). "The very experience of flow thus becomes one incentive for growing to higher levels of complexity" (p. 45).

If you've been writing at least 15 minutes a day since we started break writing, I hope you have experienced this flow one or more times already. In this flow, you've likely overcome the obstacles of fear and anxiety and been able to continue to write better and for longer periods of time. If so, let me encourage you to shift from making yourself write for 15 minutes a day to making yourself write until you experience "flow" - that experience of being totally engaged in all the complexity of your task and you are fully involved and enjoying writing. (If it hasn't happened yet, it will. I promise.)

*Stream of consciousness writing is simple writing down as quickly as you can all the thoughts you have about your subject. Don't worry about spelling or punctuation or spacing. Just write down what you think comes next...and next and next...enough to be able to continue your train of thought and ideas the next time you start to write.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). Good business: Leadership, flow, and the making of meaning. New York: Penguin.

Some of the information in the Break Writing postings is drawn from previously published work, and I have tried to properly attribute the ideas and work of others. If I have failed to do so, please let me know so I can clarify and correct (ja2310@columbia.edu)

Continue to Break Writing #5 - Stuck?