This Might Work: what happens when you start afresh?

A listener tried Oliver Burkeman’s writing tip. Here’s what happened.

Hey there, Bec here.

After I shared the pilot episode of This Might Work, my friend Wyl Menmuir sent me a message:

“It so worked btw. I put my notes to one side and started from scratch and wrote something much better. About 3,000 words of it too. That might be one of my most productive writing days ever.”

Starting afresh

Let’s back up. In that episode I shared a writing tip from Oliver Burkeman, the bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks. Rather than revising on screen, he prints out a section of his draft - no more than 1,000 words - deletes it from his document, and types it back in from the paper.

As he explains:

“When I type it back in, I make all sorts of changes. They come very easily and naturally. Typing it back in is just admin work. You give yourself the feeling that you’re starting afresh, except this time you have the whole thing printed out.”

Oliver Burkeman

You’ll have to listen to hear me gasp when he mentions deleting the original!

What happened next

Wyl, boosted by his most productive day in recent memory, sent those 3,000 words to his agent. Within a fortnight he had offers from three publishers. The book has been commissioned.

That might be the most spectacular result, but over the weeks after that episode went out I heard from lots of people who’d tried the tip. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. I loved hearing about it either way.

Those messages convinced me the format worked - and I’m delighted to say that This Might Work is now a proper podcast series. Each episode, a writer, artist or thinker shares a tip, a real person tries it on a real project, and I explain the background – the science, psychology or history behind why it works. All in around 15 minutes.

Listen (or listen again) to Oliver’s tip and subscribe to This Might Work on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave it a five-star review - it’s the single biggest thing you can do to help me find an audience for the show.

Episode two, featuring Emma Gannon on solo creative boosts, lands this Wednesday.

Keep going, Bec

P.S. I’d love to know what you think of Oliver’s tip and if you try it, let me know how you get on.

Credits

Presenter: Bec Evans

Featuring: Oliver Burkeman and Elizabeth Morphis

Extracts from Matt Bell Refuse To Be Done and an Elizabeth Day interview with Jilly Cooper’s where she talks about Riders.

Producers: Bec Evans and Chris Smith of Breakthroughs & Blocks

Podcast production: Suzi Dale, Story Publishing

Pilot episode Starting afresh with Oliver Burkeman was released on Substack last November with a bonus episode and link to the full transcript.