Hemingway on When To Call It a Day

    Mice: How much should you write a day? 

    Y.C.: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it. 

     Mice: All right. 

     Y.C.: Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. Once you are into the novel it is as cowardly to worry about whether you can go on the next day as to worry about having to go into inevitable action. You have to go on. So there is no sense to worry. You have to learn that to write a novel. The hard part about a novel is to finish it. 

     Mice: How can you learn not to worry? 

     Y.C.: By not thinking about it. As soon as you start to think about it stop it. Think about something else. you have to learn that. 

          By Line: Ernest Hemingway, pp. 216-217

From Ernest Hemingway on Writing, Edited by Larry W. Phillips

"Always stop while you are going good and when you know what will happen next."

"Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start... the next day."

Great advice for writing, and great advice for training.

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