Hi everyone.
What can you do when the money is running out, you haven’t sold any work since Taylor Swift became more famous than Elvis and you can’t get an agent or editor to take you on for love nor macaroni. The answer is... keep going! To achieve success as a writer, you have to be incredibly self-motivated and at times, that can feel like trying to climb Everest with a large tin of treacle tied to each ankle. Fortunately, there are things you can do to get your mojo working again and here are just a few of them.
1. When the going gets tough, reach for chocolate
Or herbal tea, Kendal Mint Cake, listening to heavy metal, walking the hamster or whatever other treat you fancy. Try creating a work/treat/work sandwich. (You can use an actual sandwich if you like.) Tell yourself that you’ll write for forty minutes, stop for your treat and then write for another forty minutes. Repeat as required.
When the muse seems to have packed its suitcase and gone off to the South of France, there is sometimes only one way to get any writing done. Don’t stop to think. Just grab a pen or tap on your keyboard and write down the first thing that comes into your head. Then the second thing, the third thing and so on. Even if what you have written is complete nonense, at least you will have something to work on at a later date.
3. Be your own writing coach
Unless you can afford to pay for the services of an actual coach, you need to be your own. Buy yourself a posh notebook or set up a planner on your computer and use it to log your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly writing goals. Then add in lots of positive statements (preferably in bright colours!) such as You’ve got this and You can do it from your “coach” that you can look at on a regular basis to help you stay motivated and achieve those goals.
If traffic wardens, surgeons, plumbers or airline pilots spent as much time agonising over how or when to start work as we writers often do, the world would have come to a complete standstill by a week on Wednesday. Don’t stop to think about what to write, when to write or whether you are wasting your time and someone else’s money by writing. Just do it!
5. Read, read and read again
It may seem harsh to hear this but if you aren’t reading, you shouldn’t really be writing. I’m not talking about having to wade through War and Peace even though I believe it’s had one or two five star reviews on Amazon. Reading can be anything that either inspires you because it’s so good or has you heading straight back to your writing desk (you do have one, don’t you?) to prove to yourself that you can produce something much better.
6. Reflect on past glories
“If you’ve done it once, you can do it again” is a really useful mantra to add to your coaching statements because when you’re feeling de-motivated, it’s all too easy to forget about your previous successes. Make a habit of looking regularly at your “cuttings file”, whatever form that takes. Trust me, you’ll be amazed at what a motivator this can be.
7. Rework old work
Get that cuttings file out again or any piece of work you’ve had published or think you should have had published. (Editors don’t know what they’re talking about, right?) Try rewriting it in a different form. If it was a short story, rewrite it as a piece of flash fiction. If it was an opinion piece, rewrite it as a poem. Or just use some of the themes, words or complete sentences to create something completely new.
Please note: This is a revised and updated version of a piece I had published in The New Writer magazine in 2011.
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