In my experience, most people sit down to write and pick up where they left off. But if where they left off doesn’t match their current mood, then it only becomes that much more difficult to actually work on the story. Nonlinear writing is a writing technique to help you overcome that difficulty. Instead of writing the events of your story in the order they happen, you simply look at the things that happen in your story and pick one that suits your mood and the things that have been on your mind lately. In other words, rather than letting where you are in your story dictate what you have to be feeling and thinking about, let what you are feeling and thinking about dictate what part of your story you write! This makes it much easier to get into the pace of what you are writing and removes that oh-so-tempting excuse of “not in the mood” from play all in one fell swoop. Pretty great, right?

Part Five