To Jumpstart Your Writing

When you sit down to write, whether that's first thing in the morning or late at night, how do you jumpstart yourself in to writing mode?

That is my question for today. This has been a big problem for me lately, and I'm sure its something other people struggle with too. When I only have small chunks of time here and there to write, as opposed to big blocks set aside specifically for writing, I have a hard time getting in to the groove before I've run out of time. Does this happen to you? And how do you make it so that doesn't happen, and you can just hit the ground running...er, computer screen typing?

I've tried a few things that do help a little. Like ending in the middle of a scene, or remembering the last sentence I wrote and forming the next sentence in my mind while I'm away from the computer. But I still feel like it takes me a good twenty or thirty minutes to really get in zone where things start really coming, and sometimes twenty or thirty minutes is all you have. Sometimes less.

Am I alone in this or does it happen to you as well? Is there a way to get rid of or at least shorten the less productive warm-up time? Or is it just a natural part of the writing process that just happens and has to be dealt with?

Sarah Allen