Have you ever felt unmotivated to write your story? or thought that if a publisher hired you that would give you the motivation you need beat your writer’s block? Trust me it won’t. I’ve gone down the path of having a publisher and an assigned deadline and still motivation was no where to be found; I still felt confused, frustrated and lost.
“You had a publisher, an audience and an income; How did that not motivate you?” I asked this same question before but after experiencing that for myself and still feeling unmotivated I learned that money or recognition isn’t what motivated me to start and finish my book. How long will money keep you motivated to go to a job you absolutely hate? I had to stop and address the real reason why I didn’t feel motivated to write.
These are the 3 tips that helped me go from stopping and starting multiple stories to now having 3 fully finished stories and 2 published books (I’m a homeschooling mother of 3 so I think that’s a pretty big feat):
1. Unmotivated to write? Find your “why”.
I had to look back at the reason why I wanted to do this story in the first place. Just like in relationships you will have good and bad days but it’s that love that you both initially had that brought you together and it’s that same love that helps you stay together through the bad days. This can also be applied to your relationship with your story; Find what message or theme idea that motivated you to write this story in the first place.
2. Beat Writer’s Block by Acknowledging the mistake and learn from it.
Next I had to address what caused me to become unmotivated to write. This situation is similar to burning out the tires of your car trying to go forward but the car is still in parked and all you end up doing is spinning your wheels kicking up smoke. I received a comment pointing out this fact in my story, they said that it felt like the story wasn’t going anywhere, it was just a sequence of events happening without an ending destination. It wasn’t until then was I able to finally take an honest look at my story and see that I had gotten off track of writing my initial reason or message behind my story. Acknowledging the cause I could now avoid repeating that same mistake and this brings me to my final component.
3. Find what you want to say and say it.
With my story Love! Love! Fighting! I had fallen into the same trap from before with my previous story that was contracted with a publisher and when the contract ended the story feel into my graveyard of unfinished comics. This time around I wanted to finally finish something. I had to find what it was that I was trying to say; in my heart I had this burning message but it took my brain a while to finally understand it. Reading Brian McDonald’s Invisible Ink blog and book and listening to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat audio book helped me finally understand what I wanted to say that I felt passionate about. When I know what it is I want to say and I’m passionate about it then I can go on for hours talking about it proving why I’m passionate about it (I can go on and on about why Running man is so awesome, no lack of motivation there I know my fan girl message clearly.)
Accept that you will have bad days but find what message you wanted to say that first motivated you to start this story.
Question: What was it that first motivated you to write your story?
If you’d like to read my comic about a young woman’s Journey to finding her Self-worth then click this link and enjoy: Love! Love! Fighting!
