Keep Your Hand Moving

A Simple Writing Practice for Getting Unstuck

This post is part of my series How to Start a Writing Practice: A 7-Week Experiment. Read the full series here.

How did it go last week?

Did the practice feel easy?

Did you get stuck?

Did you start criticizing yourself for not “doing it right”?

All of that is normal.

Most of us are really hard on ourselves, even when we show up and do the thing we said we’d do. I mean there we are, good kids, pencil in hand, and three sentences in we’re telling ourselves it’s not good enough, we’re doing it wrong. It’s a waste of time.

That voice is doing an important job. It thinks it’s keeping you safe. Less risk = less chance of “failing.” But mostly that voice just keeps you stuck. Stuck = safe. This shows up a lot for thoughtful, capable people who care about doing things well. (Raising my hand on that one too).

Here’s what writer Natalie Goldberg offers us this week:

“If you keep your creator-hand moving, the editor can’t catch up with it and lock it.”

How to deal with that 'ol inner critic

When you keep your hand moving, you keep the momentum going. You’re not trying to win at writing, you’re just keeping your hand in motion long enough for the nervous system to realize, Oh. We’re okay. This is safe. We’re not in danger.

It’s kind of like weightlifting. There’s always that initial resistance—the moment your body says, “No, you can’t do this, are you crazy!?” If you stop there, the resistance wins. But if you keep going, things start to change. Your muscles warm up. It gets easier. And the voice in your head quiets down as it realises, wait, this is not killing me.

And before you know it—twenty reps and three pages later—you’re a little freer. A little stronger.

With each day, you’re training your brain and body, and that critic, to trust this process. You’re teaching yourself that you can stay with something without breaking down three minutes in to check Instagram, Threads, the weather, or that text message.

No, your phone is not even going to be in the same room with you.Seriously, remove that attention-sucking box of digital despair from your sight.

Tips for writing

Make sure you have a comfortable pen or pencil. Something that feels genuinely good in your hand. Because once you get going, you may be writing at the speed of NASCAR, and hand cramps are an unwelcome pit stop.

This is why I now have three very special pens. (And an excellent excuse to increase my collection if need be. It’s a business expense—right?) Different mood? Different pen. I look forward to the feel of green ink and a fountain pen one day, or a rollerball the next.

What matters with your writing practice is that you begin to associate it with pleasure. Something you actually look forward to. Discipline doesn’t come through criticism or self-punishment. It comes from making an experience worth repeating. You get momentum when something feels doable—and even better—when it feels good.

Your practice:

Find one way to make this something you genuinely look forward to.

Light a candle. Use special paper. Write with a pen you love. Drink a special tea. Sit in the same comfy chair each day. Give yourself five minutes — not thirty.

This essay originally appeared on my Substack newsletter Sensitive Matters.

Read the next post in this series.