Tag: Motivation to write

Fighting to keep up my momentum

April was a great month for writing. I wrote more than 50,000 words. May has been fantastic. But I’ve recently finished a book and now I’m fighting to keep up my momentum.

Finishing a big project leaves me feeling adrift. I have to stop letting myself feel like I’ve finished something when I finish a book. The big project is my career, not this one book, so I have to keep writing if I want to avoid a long break between books.

Implementing the plan should be easy but we all know it won’t be. But here’s what I’m doing.

1. No writing break between books.

2. No moving on to a book I “should” finish while I’m interested in writing a different book.

I’m writing the book I’m most interested in writing right now, not the book I feel like I should write right now. That particular series has waited this long for another book, and it can keep waiting.

Enthusiasm = intrinsic motivation = finishing the next book before I lose interest in it and have to work hard to regain it.

I hope it works, but I really won’t know until I’ve tried it a few times and seen the results. :)

I’m also still following my rule about sweets and 1,000 words. This little rule helped me write more than 50,000 words in April. And that momentum put me in a position to break my 6,241 words in a day record.

My new record? 6,606 words on May 7, 2019.

I don’t have a post for that day, because I’ve really been focused on writing fiction and saving the blog posts for progress updates, but I am thrilled I did it. It was awesome. It was also exhausting. I’m really not meant to write that many words in one day! :-) Next record to break? 7,000 words in a day. It’ll happen.

Now, off to write. Today is the first day of the new book. (Which I started in January, and wrote a few thousand on between then and now, so I’m not actually starting the book at zero words. I really want to write this book! It’s going to be so much fun.)

And I really want one of the brownies my daughter made so I’m definitely about to start writing. :D

That didn’t last

I made plans before I finished my last book not to start the next in that series until I’d written the book that I already have in progress. I’m attempting to keep my enthusiasm for my projects high by managing them better. It’s easy to lose enthusiasm when I write a few thousand words and then move to something else for months at a time before I get back to it.

The last book I finished? I wrote about that delay. I also wrote about how much more of a chore writing is when I have delays like that because I get bored and lose interest in what I started and have difficulties getting that interest back.

To be technical about it, writing that last book took me from March 2017 to November 2018. That’s more than a year, and that’s a long time to try to keep up interest in writing one story.

That said, my plans to avoid doing that again aren’t working out—which is a total bummer. :-|

I got an awesome idea this morning for the direction I want to go in the series I finished that last book for. At the same time, I’ve had no ideas for the series and book I’m currently supposed to be writing. I haven’t had much interest at all in finishing this book—the same one I was flying through just months ago while still trying to finish the other book.

I wrote down the idea for the series and my thoughts about it, or some of them anyway, and I went ahead and started the document for the next book in that series. I haven’t gone so far as to write words for that book yet, but it is calling to me something fierce. The idea for the opening scene is right there in my brain and it wouldn’t take any effort at all to just let myself explore it a little.

It doesn’t pay to ignore the muse, but I’m trying.

It’s a conundrum. Miss out on harnessing the enthusiasm I have for the one series to struggle with the other book instead? Or write what I want while the little bit of enthusiasm I still have for the other book continues to wane?

The only right choice seems to be to let go and allow myself to work on two books at a time again. Or to make myself. Call it what you will.

But hey, it worked for the last book.

Sort of.

I finally finished it, at any rate, and I enjoyed doing it, and I broke through to a 6,000 word day. I didn’t push myself to do it, either. It just happened.

Breaking patterns

I had to take some drastic measures to get myself working again, and it’s turned out to be a pretty simple thing. What I’ve done, I think, is just break some patterns I’d slipped into.

First, I bought a couple of books, after writing a blog post I never posted.

I would resolve not to make excuses for these behaviors but I’ve already done that. And I don’t often make excuses. I just don’t do the work.

That’s what’s going to have to change. I have to become someone who does the work.

Which brings to mind a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time but haven’t.

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield at Amazon.

Turning Pro at Amazon.

Reading books about writing is always motivational for me. I need to spend more time doing it. Even when I feel like it’s using up writing time, because the alternative is a low interest in writing and using none of that bountiful writing time to write anyway.

Do the Work is interesting. A little hype-y at times, but I’ve picked up a few thoughts from it that I really want to remember. I’m really looking forward to reading Turning Pro, but Do the Work felt much more like it was what I was meant to be reading at that moment. :-)

I’m just over halfway through it now, 56% according to my Kindle, and my goal is to keep reading it and Turning Pro (and The Warrior Ethos) until I’ve finished them all before I move on to reading anything else.

Second, I’m listening to writer podcasts, something I used to do but stopped when I decided I was probably wasting time doing it. I think it was a mistake to stop, because listening to them makes me excited about writing even when it’s material I’ve heard before. Yes, they use up a lot of time, but since I listen while I cook, eat, and do other things, that keeps my interest in writing high even when I’m distracted with other things.

I credit listening to these yesterday and the day before with my sudden increase in discipline and my renewed interest in writing. I stuck to a schedule yesterday, even if it was a loose schedule, and I really put some effort into writing for the first time in nearly two weeks.

:D

So there, that’s what I’m doing to break the patterns that I’ve felt like I was trapped in for the last few weeks, and I’m finally making progress on my current book again.

If you’re having difficulties sitting down to write, not because you don’t have time, but because your interest has waned (especially for reasons you don’t understand), try something like this. It really has helped. :-)