Years ago, when I moved to Alberta from Vancouver Island, I was puzzled to see little stands with plug-ins at parking lots. Then I spent my first winter there and I got it. It was so cold you had to plug your car in to keep it warm, or it wouldn’t start. Getting into the writing mindset is very much like driving a car in Alberta. You need to warm up your engine first.

Just starting a writing habit can take time. After I’ve had a break, it takes me about three weeks to get back into writing. I expect the first week to be tough. I’m lucky to get anything out at all. I expect to write absolute crap the second. By the third week, there’s a spark, and my engine turns over. In short, I need a little time to get back into the groove.

This won’t come as a surprise to you. It’s like going back to school after a summer break to find we’ve forgotten everything we’d learned the semester before, or we’ve come home after a holiday, only to find we left a few brains cells on the beach in Hawaii.

So, my first bit of advice is to start a writing habit and keep writing, if you can, five days a week. Having said that, I believe occasional breaks from writing are as important as the writing itself. You need to regenerate. When you do you will come back recharged. After a good rest you’ll find ideas will just be there for you.

You might only fit an hour or two of writing into any given day. But with each passing day that you write, you will find it a little easier to enter the flow state. If you practice meditation you will know exactly what I’m talking about. When you first learned to meditate, it was hard to get your mind to settle, but after weeks of practice, entering the state becomes nearly effortless.

Most writers start their day with some form of free writing. Usually this means setting a timer, picking a general topic to write about, and just throwing stuff to the page, anything at all, not worrying if it makes sense or not. The point is to keep writing until you’re in the flow, the writing mindset, even if that means writing, “I don’t know what to write.” Keep at it for 15 minutes to half an hour and you’ll find the writing begins to flow. Once you get good at free-writing, you may only need ten minutes to get your engine warmed up.