I’ve always been fascinated by the rumours that Ugo Foscolo, the hot-blooded Romantic, chained himself to his desk, and that Victor Hugo had his clothes locked away so he couldn’t leave the house and was forced to write. How can we make ourselves write without using extreme tricks? When I ask the most productive people I know for their secret, they usually shrug and say, “hard work.” Fair enough, yet hard work without experimentation soon calcifies. During my PhD I treated my own workflow like a laboratory, running tiny trials, discarding what failed, doubling down on what worked. Three habits survived, and I’m happy to share them here
The Pitch
Start-ups rehearse their elevator lines until they can deliver them. Writers should steal the trick. Saying an idea out loud forces it to cohere. Before a single word touches the screen, I test-drive the piece as if a friend has just dropped by for a cup of tea: So, what are you writing? If I can’t answer in one breath, the thought isn’t ready. I pace, trim clauses, swap verbs, until the sentence stands on its own. Something strange happens when you vocalise a concept: the fuzzy parts jangle like loose screws. Once the pitch runs clean, the draft gains direction, not just momentum. We pitch all the time; the difference is noticing, and getting good at it.
The Highlighter habits
A pack of neon markers may look childish next to a laptop, but it’s the cheapest editor I know. Once I have a draft, sometimes even a rough one, I print it out or read it on screen and go through it with colours. This habit helps me in three key ways:
- First, it gathers. I use one colour to highlight all the parts that talk about the same topic. It helps me see if similar ideas are scattered and need to be grouped together. When I read a student draft, I often do the same, highlight it and send it back to show how the discussion has good points, just scattered across the page like puzzle pieces from different boxes.
- Next comes rhythm. I use yellow to tap the first word of every sentence. It’s a quick diagnostic: Are we starting with strong key workds? Or hiding behind hedges like although, meanwhile, however, may, or despite? If every sentence crawls in with a dependent clause, the prose is dragging a limp.
- Finally, colour becomes a tool of balance. I highlight the key information I want the reader to remember. Is it all crammed into one part of the piece? Is it repeated too often? Are important insights buried while throwaway lines parade in bold? When the colours spread too thin or clump too thick, I know what needs trimming, what needs shifting, and what needs to go.
The Wash-Out Interval
A draft that goes straight from keyboard to publication is like bread pulled too early from the oven, edible, but still doughy at its centre. I’ve started baking my prose longer by scheduling deliberate gaps between versions: an hour when I’m on deadline, a day when I can spare it, a full week when the piece is pretending to be important. During the pause I read something unrelated, go for a walk, let the argument cool. The rhythm can startle collaborators. Early January this year, they open their inbox to find a complete draft of a March grant application and feel why so early. I keep reminding them: the point is not to work day and night, but to give the text (and ourselves) time, and decent nighs sleep. Distance turns us into first-time readers, exposing the missing steps in our reasoning. The time away does as much writing as the time spent in front of the page.
Why These Habits Beat Handcuffs (and Padlocked Wardrobes)
They scale. A pitch can be rehearsed on a bus ride, markers cost less than coffee, and the washout merely asks for patience. More importantly, they externalise the work. Instead of scanning a draft for amorphous “quality,” I listen, colour, and walk until the text reveals its own instructions. Foscolo’s chains and Hugo’s locked wardrobe belong to another century; habit is the more humane constraint.
I embedded those habits in this very post: rehearsed the pitch aloud, annotated the draft in colour, and let the file languish on my computer, so long I nearly lost track of it, for more than three weeks before hitting publish.
If you practise different rituals that keep your prose honest, I’d love to hear them. Good habits, like good stories, travel fastest when they’re shared.
/ Aug 2025
