How to stay motivated while writing

It’s hard.

We’ve all been there — the bouncing excitement, the glittering pull of an awesome idea. It’s fabulous and yours and exploding with potential. Though it’s still only in your head, the awesome idea is brimming with snarky characters who are sure to become memorable, well-loved and widely-quoted. Your awesome idea will pull the depths of emotion from your readers, spawn fanfic and fanart, and have them clamour for sequels.

Well, if you could actually finish the darn thing.

Because once that honeymoon phase is over, the marriage needs work. So how do we finish? How do we have a beginning, middle and end? How do we cope with the crushing fear that our awesome idea really might not be that…awesome? And that, really, is the big reason we don’t finish.

You start doubting your work. You can’t bear to finish something that might be a big, steaming pile of meh or bleh. So here’s why you should keep going:

• Good writing is often rewriting.

• Rewriting is easier with a complete story.

• If you won’t finish your story, no one else will.

• Every author started at the beginning just like you.

So don’t give up just yet. No one said it would be easy. Frustrating and disappointing, yes, but also stimulating and rewarding. It can be challenging in a great way. That story is begging to be told so don’t give up on it just yet.

Ignite that enthusiasm.

What part of your awesome idea sent you into feverish eagerness in the first place? Was it a scene where your hero finally reunites with the sister he was forced to leave behind or the what-if premise that anyone can turn into a bird if scared? Work on that, expand it, develop it. Write those fun scenes and connect the dots between them afterwards. Watch a film, read a comic or play a video game – this will stimulate your imagination with new characters, situations, plots and worlds. Edit some of your old stuff. If you’ve hit a wall with your current story, step back and engage with something else. You’ll notice the improvement you’ve made and it will zap some confidence back into you when you return to your work-in-progress.

Create a productive writing environment.

I have an adorable soft-toy robin that I perch on top of the lampshade on my bed-side table. It’s cute and cheers me up. Snuggle under a warm blanket, maybe sip some hot chocolate or put on some background instrumental music to match the tone of the scene you’re working on. If you’re working on a heist where one of the squad has been caught, amp up some tense music to immerse yourself in the mood. When do you usually feel most stimulated? When you’ve just got out of the shower or been for a long walk? Generate a moodboard of your story; Pinterest is excellent for gathering images of characters and settings. Those auto-pilot activities have a way of triggering solutions to plot-holes or sparking a perfect plot twist.

Get some feedback.

Sometimes, we can’t even figure out what’s wrong. We just know that it’s not quite right. Or maybe we’ve been working on it so long, we just can’t see our story objectively anymore. Is that character as funny as we think she is? Is the religion we’ve invented actually nonsensical? A great way to gain some perspective is to get someone to read your story or work-in-progress. After all, most of us want to share our work, right? It’s okay if you don’t but if you do, find someone who reads in the genre you’re writing and see what they think of your story so far. This can be terrifying and take us back to our what-if-it-sucks paralysis. Don’t worry. This is part of the process. This is moving forwards. You might even find a writing buddy or cheerleader!

Plan your story.

You’ve likely heard of the plotter vs pantser method; either you meticulously craft a chapter by chapter breakdown or you wing it with style. You might hate outlines. Maybe you prefer to toss aside the map and forge ahead with nothing to restrict your creativity. In actuality, most of us are somehere in the middle. Maps can still be quite useful. Sometimes, you just don’t know how the scene should evolve, or how the characters should react. Maybe they’re even wandering aimlessly and the story seems stuck in a pothole of a plothole. Haul it out by deciding how your story ends. You might not know the exact ending, and you might even change it once you get there, but knowing there’s an end point can push you to keep going and ride the journey through to its resolution.

Take a break.

Sometimes, you really just need to step back — there’s too much pollution and you need to stop the car for a week so you can breathe fresh air again. You’ll notice the mistakes clearer, and you’ll return with eagerness. While I was revising my novels, I would read through, line edit and—once finished—immediately start the process again. Back-to-back edits. I thought I was being efficient but I was really just polishing the prose without sitting back to assess the larger picture of what I wanted to produce. But once you realise that, you can fix the bigger story structure before fine-tuning the details. Those clear skies will return and you’ll be able to see the bright stars above.

So how do you improve your story? By identifying the problem, which can be:

Pacing Structure Stakes Tension

Setting Plot Dialogue World-building

Character Foreshadowing Theme POV

Likely, it’s a combination of several. After all, these are all aspects that make up a story. Throwing any one off balance, even marginally, can knock your whole story off into an I-don’t-like-it-anymore tailspin.

You will grow. You will get better.

Hang in there. Take a break if you need to and take care of yourself when you need to. You’re not the first person who’s struggled and you definitely won’t be the last. Use that uncertainty and hesitation and pick your way forwards, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word. You’re not alone.

So go write.