Ending Today’s Writing Session to Make Tomorrow’s Session Easier

At the end of every Pyjama Writing session, I invite writers to “do whatever will make it easy to get back to their writing tomorrow.” The goal is to leave a small, welcoming portal back into the work.

Recently, in one of our end-of-month Pyjama Writing extended chats, one of our regular participants asked, “How do I do that?”

Here are some techniques you can try. See which ones work best for you.

• Stop while you still know what comes next. Before you leave the page, write a brief note to your tomorrow self: “Next time, begin with…”
  • Include something you know will show up in the next scene.
  • Or ask yourself a question you can start with next time.
  • Or name an image you’ll start by describing or capturing
• You can expand the above suggestion to include stopping halfway through a sentence. Ernest Hemingway famously used a technique where he would deliberately stop writing mid-sentence when he knew exactly the words that would come next.
• If you don’t have a clear idea of where to go next, jot down three possibilities. They don’t need to be equally good; they simply give you choices.
• Leave a question hanging: “What is the main character afraid will happen here?” or “What am I really trying to understand in this section?”
• Add a rough placeholder directly in the draft: [Describe the kitchen], [Find the right date], or [do some musing about why this mattered].
• Record the emotional centre of the next section: “Next, write about the moment she realizes he isn’t coming back.”
• Gather anything you’ll need—notes, quotations, photographs, research—and leave it open or together in one place.
• Give the next session a very small first task:
  • “reread only the final paragraph”, or
  • “write for ten minutes”, or
  • “add 200 words”

• Save a separate “parking lot” note for stray ideas so they remain available without interrupting the draft.
• End with a quick reflection:
  • “Today I discovered…” or
  • “Next time I’m curious about…”

You’re not asking your future self to rediscover the whole project—just leaving a clearly marked trail back in.

Feel free to let us know what was helpful!