Motivating Yourself to Write

 Motivating

Yourself

to

Write

I woke up this morning wanting to write but when finally ready to do so my motivation had stopped. Instead, I switched to reading yet am now asking myself what stopped me.

We writers are just like everyone else, but with the added bonus of expressing ourselves through the written word. Life is full of stresses from a day job to managing a household. These responsibilities can dampen our creativity and unlike the words we save to hard drives or commit to paper, we ourselves are mortal. I'm now asking myself what motivated me to write this blogpost and not more of my current manuscript. The answer this time around is simple and that is to help all of you.

I come from a sports background, and though sports bores me now, I still find myself wanting to be the best I can be. I see others setting and frequently reaching goals. This is what has motivated me for the longest time. Set goals and reach them. Recently, though that has been harder to do. My suggestion to both you and myself is push through so one day you win. Be like Tiger Woods with a golf tournament (or in our case a word count goal) by putting as much focus on what you want to achieve as possible. The easy part would be to set aside writing by saying your too busy, or in Tiger's case... Wait! What am I saying? Be like Tiger Woods and hit that word count goal. Push yourself! He has bad shots in golf, but in our case we can delete what we mess up on. In golf, its either the bunker or a pound, and coming back from that on the final day of a golf tournament is far worse than writing a line of crappy dialogue.

Another way to motivate yourself is to look deep within. Ask what started you on this current manuscript. Was it to emulate a writing hero of yours? Did the words build up to a boiling point and need released? Or is writing a way to get your voice out into the world? I think if you search for what made you become a writer the rest will work itself out. If you had that drive to be creative in the beginning it will be there always. Writing is a part of your soul. Trust your soul and get to typing. You can always fix what you dislike later.

A final way to motivate yourself to write is to look at where you need to improve. You might have some fear that your old habits will kick in from passive voice to slipping in and out of present and past tense. Read up on what all these issues are and how to fix them. You may want to start a short story practicing what you struggle with most. I can't promise one day of practice is all it will take. Such a thing would be unrealistic in every field of pursuit. What I can promise is that by the end you'll feel better about yourself and you'll be writing.