Just a note, doing the same load of laundry twice in a day doesn’t make it cleaner. But it’s a great way to not get important shit done. This is going to be a rambling rant about motivation, proceed with that knowledge. During and after the holidays I found myself in a writing rut. I had all these aspirations of writing while visiting family and friends for the week I visited for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I even had a schedule. I needed it for the combined two weeks I was away. I told myself I have to write. Did I? No. Not really. Maybe a few hundred words in the combined two weeks. I aim for 2k words a day, that’s about 20k words I missed out on! That stinks. I should note, I had a great time visiting family. But I had time to write and I didn’t and I only have myself to blame. One thing, I’m finding I’m bad at sticking with my routine while travelling which isn’t good. Something I need to work on. But after the holidays I wasn’t motivated to write, and it left me thinking, where did my motivation go? Writing is like anything you want to get better at, you have to do it. You have to put in the effort and practice.
It’s easy to say “I’m busy” as an excuse for not doing something. But what are you actually busy with? Is it more important than your long term goals or just easy so it feels like you’ve accomplished something? I found myself being “busy” with bullshit. Small, easy tasks that really didn’t add up to anything of value for my long term goal. I just released a book, and I’m working on a second this year. I have two goals to focus on. Promoting the first and completing the second. That’s it. Now, I’ve started to get out of this rut this month, which is good. I’m not at my 2k / day goal yet but it will come. I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself as that will burn me out. My goal now is write every day, even if it’s just 500 words. Writing this blog post is helpful, because I’m writing, and it’ll transition into my fictional world easily. It’s motivating me. I also find reading in genre is a nice motivator (early on it was a detractor because I thought I couldn’t do better but that shouldn’t be the mindset or goal).
At the end of the day if you truly want something you need to just do it. I’m excited about my second book, I love the ideas I have for it, I can see how it plays out. This is also a motivator when I think about it, scenes, and dialogue I want to include. Getting excited and talking about something helps motivation I find, and why many authors / writers suggest doing, is finding a writing buddy to bounce ideas off of.
OK, I think my motivation rant is over and worked for me. Off to write in the fictional world…
