Always take a three-minute break after writing the paragraph. In this break you must do something that is not related to either your writing or the rest of your day’s tasks.

This is easy. You really just have to do it. After you stop writing (on time!), don’t start something else for three minutes. Don’t even prepare for what will happen next. If you’re writing another paragraph, don’t think about it for three minutes, don’t even look at the key sentence. Don’t open your emails. Don’t glance in your calendar to see what’s coming up. Relax. Get a cup of coffee. Do some push ups. Flip aimlessly through a book. Send a message to your friend or lover or spouse or child. Look out the window. Just don’t work or even think about work.

The point of this rule is to protect the end of your writing session from the anticipation of the work to come. Get yourself in the habit of thinking of the time after the writing session as pure emptiness. It is the nothingness that divides the here-and-now of your writing from the there-and-then of your next order of business. Even if the next order of business is another writing moment, it must be separate and distinct from the one that went before. What this really means is that the current writing moment is a discrete one, with its own internal boundaries, its own integrity. It is the feeling in the “now” of your writing that you are supporting by building the habit of taking a break.

You should never feel like the end of your writing moment will allow you to “get on with it”. You are already engaged in “it”. Pay attention. When your 27 minutes are up, there is nothing to do but relax. Only then should you get on with your day. Which you should then, of course, just go and do.

[Click here to see all the Rules.]

This is something I came up with a few years ago, but which I thought worth looking at again. It’s a reading of the video for Travis’s “Writing to Reach You” as an allegory of the peer review process. I’ve put in time markers in square brackets to coordinate your viewing of the video with my interpretation.  Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

The whole process is a “front stage” activity in Goffman’s sense. Backstage, [0:04] you touch up the manuscript fixing all the punctuating and adjusting tour references to the style guide. You put on your best face. Then you submit it [0:20] and the manuscript is now “under review”.

The reviewers examine your paper [0:37] and you eventually get the answer back from the journal editor [0:55]. The reviewers, it turns out, have some hard words to say about your work, but the criticism they hurl art your paper sort of hurts them [1:16] as much as it hurts you. After reading their report you pick yourself up. You keep going.

[1:25] Though their own projects are stuck in their own way, your colleagues are waiting and willing to help. They offer you support and you submit the paper again.

[1:55] You receive the answer from the second round of reviews. A senior editor is now taking an active interest. [2:05] You feel like you have to run for cover, but [2:35] when the dust settles and the smoke clears you can see he was only taking one of your reviewers out of the equation [2:50].

Still, you sort of like that reviewer’s style, and you try it out for few paragraphs in your next rewrite. You incorporate one of his ideas as a sort of scalp [2:53]. The other reviewer is not impressed [2:56]. Fortunately, you’ve developed a thick skin. You absorb the new criticism and cast off the more outrageous arrows [3:02]. That idea you took from the discarded reviewer’s comments wasn’t really you anyway [3:17].

You get ready to resubmit another version [3:21]. There’s a brief moment of hesitation [3:29], but you do it anyway. When you get the letter saying your paper has been accepted it’s like coming home. [3:35] Your colleagues and your peers are in the same room, so to speak. In fact, one of your anonymous reviewers reveals who she is and congratulates you [3:40]. She loves your paper now, and she’s going to run with a few of your ideas. [3:43]

You’re backstage again. [3:45] Your inside is outside.