2 Keys to Unlock Your Momentum

unlock your momentum
Photo credit: andronicusmax via Visual Hunt / CC BY

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Fierce on the Page by Sage Cohen (@sagecohen), recently released by Writer’s Digest Books.


The world is brimming with advice about how to write more and write better. Chances are good that you’ve explored some—or maybe even many—of these recommendations. Chances are also good that you’re not getting the kind of mileage you’d expect from adapting these approaches.

What’s in your way?

Before you can make good use of someone else’s advice, it’s important to develop a realistic picture of who you are, what your tendencies are, and what you’re realistically willing and able to change. Two key approaches can take you there.

The first is perception. You are better equipped to reach your goals when you notice with fresh and friendly eyes who you are and how you operate.

  • Where do you stall and when do you take flight?
  • What are you doing when you have your best ideas?
  • How do you waste time?
  • What writing do you admire?
  • What do you want so badly that you haven’t even articulated it yet?

So many of us are so entrenched in our unconscious ways of doing and being that we have no idea what’s broken, and therefore we are not in a position to intelligently decide what needs fixing. Nor do we recognize and appreciate our gifts, our strengths, and our anchors of existing momentum. We may not even know what our true aspirations are, so we have no concrete way of striving for them or evaluating if we’re reaching them.

Simply paying attention to the way you write—and don’t write—can be the start of a sea change.

Pretend you are an anthropologist studying the culture of you. Keep a log of observations—about the behaviors, attitudes, and habits you notice as you write. Your job is not to judge, but to get clearer about who you are as a writer.

Once you’re working with an informed picture of how you write (and how you don’t), the second key to unlocking your momentum is giving yourself permission to be you. That’s right. Just because you read once that “serious” writers get MFAs or do manual labor to have more writing time doesn’t necessarily mean you are called to do the same. Maybe most poets write only poetry, but you span multiple genres. No problem. Perhaps you think you should write faster, be less stiff in front of an audience, sharpen your pencil more often. When you know yourself well, you can let go of advice about what you should be doing and spend time doing things that actually help you succeed.

While driving the other day, I caught myself in an inner monologue, chastising myself with this odd thought: Other people must be better at being happy than I am. I felt like a big disappointment on the happiness-maintenance scale. Then some part of me—I like to think it’s the Fierce Writer I’ve been cultivating all these years—interrupted this negative self-talk with the challenge: Well, so what? Let’s say that other people are actually better at being happy. What difference does that make? This is who you are. What do you intend to make of it?

Simply knowing and welcoming yourself can help you find true and enduring momentum as you let go of the strategies and attitudes that don’t fit—to make room for the ones that do.

What unfriendly things do you tell yourself that make you feel unwelcome? I propose that you release the oppression of who you believe you are supposed to be as a writer. No need to force yourself to do something the “right way” if it’s not your right way. Your job is to honor your process, your Fierce on the Pagerhythms, and your voice by finding ways to put them in service to your writing life. Give yourself permission to be exactly who you are. The welcomed writing self is far more receptive to fine-tuning systems, habits, and craft. The paradox is that when you welcome the writer you are today, you clear a space in which the writer you always wanted to be can come forward.


Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this article, I highly recommend you take a look at Fierce on the Page by Sage Cohen (@sagecohen).

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jeffo

Nice piece, Sage.

I wonder if part of the problem people have is also that they don’t give themselves *time* to let things work. We live in such an age of instant gratification, I can imagine people reading some particular bit of advice, saying to themselves, “YES! That’s it!” and then trying it for a week, only to abandon it when a) the next shiny bit of advice comes along, and b) they don’t see an instant boost to productivity/quality/whatever it is they’re trying to improve.

“Know thyself” said Plato, or Socrates, or someone (or many someones–including you!). Once you do, it becomes a lot easier to figure out how you can be more effective. Thanks again!

Sage Cohen

Thank you, Jeffo! Yes, I think some of us wander off too quickly from strategies that might work, and some of us hang on too long to strategies that will never serve us. When we commit to paying attention and making the choices that help us stay OUR OWN course, we increase the odds of thriving in our writing practice–and in our life.

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[…] Before you can follow anyone's advice, you need a realistic picture of who you are, what your tendencies are, and what you’re willing and able to change.  […]

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[…] 2 Keys to Unlock Your Momentum (Jane Friedman) The world is brimming with advice about how to write more and write better. Chances are good that you’ve explored some—or maybe even many—of these recommendations. Chances are also good that you’re not getting the kind of mileage you’d expect from adapting these approaches. […]

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[…] writer, Jeff Goins shares 7 things professional writers know that amateurs don’t, Sage Cohen has 2 keys to unlock your writing momentum, Jessica Strawser lists 5 tips to keep writing when life gets in the way, and Jody Hedlund wonders: […]

Laurie Prim

Love this article. I write with some degree of insecurity, just because. I write with some degree of confidence because I love my life and anything else, even something as important and meaningful to me as writing, is icing. That is liberating, and I’m grateful. Still, this essay feels validating: To thyself be true.

Sage Cohen

This is so beautifully said, Laurie. I love how you hold insecurity alongside confidence, with freedom and gratitude!! This is the way we cultivate writing lives that sustain and nourish and transform us, I believe.

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[…] Sage Cohen on Jane Friedman’s blog (August 2, […]

Amanda Cleary Eastep

As the others said, this is a wonderful post, and I’m happy to learn more about you and your book. Love the title! These words…”I propose that you release the oppression of who you believe you are supposed to be as a writer”…are gold. The easy access we have to each other’s experiences and lives–at least that which is filtered down to us literally and otherwise–makes comparison far too easy. I’m constantly punishing myself for not posting enough, not doing enough to build an email list, etc. More so lately, I am trying to relish every moment I hold a pen in my hand, feel paper beneath it, complete a client project, meet a deadline, hear back from an agent. To look at the abundance and not the perceived lack.

Sage Cohen

Thanks for your kind words, Amanda! I LOVE that you have turned your attention to the deep sufficiencies of your writing life…such a powerful and affirming practice.

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[…] While at WD, I acquired her book, Writing the Life Poetic (one of the very few poetry titles we published during that time!), and she just released her third book with WD this month. It’s called Fierce on the Page, and I recently excerpted it here. […]

Philippa Rees

The sagacity of sage! A welcome antidote to the plethora of advisers. A great title too.The extension of being fierce on the page to the push-pull of life in the writing lane. The turbulence of the passing heavy- duty success guides so easily blow one off course, and to a grinding stop on the hard shoulder. Good to be given permission to breath and buy a punnet of strawberries instead.

Sage Cohen

Thank you, Philippa! I love thinking of purchasing strawberries as a writing success strategy!