This post took a long time to write. With a day job, in the tug-of-war over the writing I do during the rest of my day, my current book has won every time. 800 words a day is a lot! I’m keeping up with it and I’m really proud of myself. The book is taking shape, and I’m on track with my word count!!! But, this post has fallen by the wayside a bit, womp womp.

I have had people ask me how I work up the motivation to write 700-800 words a day, and instead of writing probably 400 words amounting to, “Yes, I am hitting my goal average daily word count,” (not entirely fair, I also have some reflections on the lectures), I thought I would turn this into a broader post on motivation.

DISCLAIMER: This post is going to be, as most of them are, deeply personal to me, my writing and organizational style, and how my brain works. I do not have ADHD or any other neurodivergences that impact my ability to start a task. Hopefully, even if none of this works for you as-is, it at least gives you some ideas.

Don’t Wait for Inspiration

A huge amount of my theory on writing motivation can be summarized by this quote by the composer Tchaikovsky which I only encountered earlier this year:

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
~Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky to N. F. von Meck, March 5, 1878. In The Life & Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, translated by Rosa Newmarch (Project Gutenberg, updated October 24, 2024).

What I get out of this quote is Tchaikovsky saying, “Inspiration is great, but if you wait for inspiration to start working, you’ll never get anything done,” or perhaps more elegantly, “Inspiration comes to those who have prepared their minds to receive it.” So, for my purposes: Write, even if it’s bad.

The good news about writing is that, unlike composing symphonies*, it is super easy for us to go back and edit! (*I have no idea but changing something in a symphony seems like it would be very hard.) This means that we can release the need to be good on the first try and just get words down on the page. I know it’s hard, I struggle with it, too, but when the words won’t come I just repeat that to myself. You can always fix it later.

So, what does this theory mean for my motivation? It varies a bit based on where I am in my working plan! That makes it sound more formal than it usually is, but I essentially go through periods of different brain modes, and that impacts how I approach my writing work.

I specifically try to enforce periods of not writing to give my brain a rest. I don’t always adhere to these periods, because I love writing and there are always new calls for submissions coming out from cool anthologies or lit mags, but I try to rest. The brain needs it, the body needs it. I deliberately don’t motivate myself during these periods. I do whatever I want, whatever is going to let my brain relax.

Then, I have casual work periods. This might be when I want to start something new or continue an existing story but I don’t have any deadlines. I don’t need to write every day, but I am looking for something to fiddle with when I get the itch. This is a period when I need to try to spark inspiration, or at least interest. I might write during huge, sudden bursts when inspiration does strike, or add a little bit more to an outline or worldbuilding document, or simply put down another 100 words on the page.

Finally, I have “second job mode.” I have a plan, I have deadlines, I have work to do. This is my current brain setting. The actual number of the words-per-day varies based on the plan I’ve set for myself, but that plan is a critical part of what allows me to start working and keep working. I often refer to my writing during these periods as “write by numbers,” and is directly related to my outlining style, which is very detailed. Usually, by the time I sit down to write during this mode, I only need to connect the dots in a scene, moving characters and their emotions from one pre-determined spot to another.

Basically, I have a difficulty scale for all the different ways that motivation comes to me – or doesn’t – and specific strategies to drum up the motivation based on what I need. Let’s go!

Easy Mode: The Body is Willing, but the Head is Empty

Basically, this is when I have motivation, I desperately want to start writing, but I have no idea what to write. I therefore need to find fuel for my brain.

For precisely this case, I keep an ideas document! I keep one in a file on my personal computer, because that is what I prefer to use. If I get an idea while I’m out and about, I scribble it down in my notes app on my phone or in a notebook and update the main document later.

This document is literally just any cool idea that comes to me. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie and want to write something with the same vibes, setting, or character moment, so I write it down. Sometimes I’ll get a big-picture idea about a book set in a cool place but with no other ideas attached. All of it goes in the document! I usually review it whenever I go in to add something and review what is already in there to see if my new addition would work well alongside something else. I match up things that feel like they would be cool together, and I frequently find that, eventually, a clump of ideas will achieve critical mass, develop their own gravitational pull, and suddenly start developing into a proper story nugget!

I therefore either have a ready-made idea to get to work on the next time I want to write but don’t know what to write, or I at least have somewhere to reference for possible ideas.

Just for fun, I also keep a (mostly private) Pinterest where I create themed boards and even have a category for story prompts. This is less organized and often less effective, but sometimes it can be fun to scroll through my collections of monsters if I am in need of ideas.

Medium Difficulty: steady as She Goes

This is when I’m not necessarily motivated every day, but I also am not on the grind. I can skip some days, I don’t have a specific deadline or a word count goal, and I’m maybe still feeling the story out. BUT, I am working on it actively and I want to get it finished. Some days, the motivation comes easily because I’m working on a story that I’m excited about. On others, no matter how much I want to make progress, I can’t get my brain into the right mode.

The first thing I might do is sit down and outline the next part of the story in detail. It is an easier mental load just to describe what’s going to happen rather than obsessing over the details of diction or precise dialogue. It means the mental load is lighter when I sit down to actually try to compose the scene for real.

The other thing that often helps is to keep the story in my brain all day. This is its own type of work, but similarly feels lower-effort. I’m just playing around, like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I’m moving pieces around in my head, finding what fits, and generally enjoying my story as a whole. Frequently, this helps me hit a point where I have found the perfect scene, and I find myself energized and ready to start writing it by the time I can get my hands on my preferred writing medium again.

Basically, finding motivation when I’m in this frame of mind is about tricking my brain into becoming excited, or lowering the barrier to entry on getting started.

Pause: Lack of Motivation as a Chance to Reflect

If I find that the impediment to sitting down and working on a story is because I don’t want to write a specific scene, that usually makes me pause. It’s time to reflect on my story and why I am not excited about this scene. Sometimes I’m just feeling burnt out and don’t want to write in general, even if I was excited about this scene before. Sometimes, though, this lack of interest suggests that I’ve encountered a weak moment in the story, and I can take some time to make it more interesting. Why don’t I want to write this scene?

When the answer is, “It’s hard,” I can implement my various methods for lowering the difficulty level of getting into a scene – outline it fully, write simply, just get it done. Usually, if I just get started, I can find the juice that makes the scene worthwhile and the writing becomes easier.

When the answer is, “It bores me,” then something is wrong. I’ve even felt like this about scenes I expected to be “action” scenes! Time to pull back: What does this scene do? Whether it’s action, a conversation, or a prophetic dream, I find that I get bored if it is only doing one thing at once. If the only purpose of a conversation between two characters is to convey plot information to the reader, I’m going to be bored. If there is no tension between the characters and what they want, I’m bored. If there is no real cause and effect in the scene, if the characters finish the conversation and simply go do something else, why did they need to talk?

My thought process with these scenes is to turn around and ask myself: Why does this scene need to happen the way that it does? What can I add to make this situation worse/more complicated for my characters? And then: What happens if I remove it? Sometimes, the things I don’t want to write can be reduced to a few simple “telling” paragraphs that can summarize the necessary details. Sometimes, the few necessary things from a scene can be absorbed into another scene where other things are happening. Those necessary things from the scene I did not want to write can add complications that make the next scene more interesting.

Maximum Difficulty: I have to Write Daily

Here’s where I am right now. Some days I do feel motivated to write, but there are a lot of days where I simply have to start writing if I want to hit my goal for the day. I therefore had to figure out how to get myself to start writing when I don’t have any motivation to do so.

One CRITICAL element to consider is that, for as long as my writing has to come second to my day job, writing every day for an extended period of time is going to be flirting with burnout. The brain still needs rest, so I build in vacation days where I can. My sister and I are going to Busch Gardens this weekend with our spouses and I am not going to do any work on this book. That is okay! I have planned my daily wordcounts around having these days off! I will come back rested and ready to go again!

My thought process for writing when I don’t want to write is always to reduce the work my brain has to do to get started. I pull up the outline of the scene. I pick out a playlist that gets me in the mood. I make sure I have my preferred drink – and water – to hand. I open the document. I remind myself that the first draft doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to exist. I can edit it good!

And then, I start. The first words, for me, are always the hardest. I deleted the first words I wrote during my session yesterday, but I did write them. They have been replaced with this sentence: “As they crossed the square outside the theater, the men saw that the statue of the Saint of Good Harvest had been moved to a plinth opposite.” I’m not bothering with cool word choice, detailed characterization, I’m not even really worried about voice at this point. I am literally getting the words on the page. Fortunately, this moment soon turned into a conversation and I was able to roll through that more smoothly. Today, I’m going to start with another line of dialogue and it’s probably going to be followed by the dialogue tag “she said.” I’m not making it complicated for myself. I’m just getting it done.

Editing is Easier and Harder

I wanted to take an extra moment to talk about motivating myself to edit! This is a whoooooole different beast, with its own motivation category. It is tricky because I sometimes use it to procrastinate – it feels easier to look over a page that is already full rather than contemplating filling a page that is totally blank. There are times, when I am at the stage of line edits, when I absolutely can do this type of edits. However, there is other editing that takes more effort.

Structural edits! These take a different kind of concentration. I want to to a more detailed post on editing, because it is not intuitive. When it comes to motivation, structural edits can be very challenging because they require higher analytical thought processes. For me, at least, it’s always harder to see the forest than the individual trees right in front of me.

I do a huge amount of my editing (and writing) work by hand, and certainly for structural edits I needed to be able to think my thoughts out in physical space, so I used notebooks. That’s when I started scrapbook-ing my notebooks! I use stickers, clippings, washi tape, anything I think is pretty and appropriately themed to create little frames for whatever I’m going to write. Is it another form of procrastination? You betcha! But it does also make me excited to use the notebook for its intended purpose.

Just like everything else, finding motivation to edit is about giving myself reasons to want to do it!

Keeping It UP: Workshop Check-In

One of the things that has really been helping my motivation to continue writing (averaging) 800 words per day is the sheer satisfaction of seeing myself actually do it! I finish another day of work and mark down my word count for that day. When I turn and look behind me, not only have I achieved yet another daily goal, I’ve got 2/3 (okay, maybe 3/5) of a book already written. There’s a book there! It’s appearing in real time, as I watch! Tomorrow, when I sit down to get started, even thought I do not want to get started, I remember that I’ve been doing the thing, and it helps me keep it up.

I had set out with some big-picture goals for the workshop, and I have been making some progress on those, too. I think I have made the strongest progress on learning to build tension organically. I’m having a lot of fun with multiple-POVs. Each character has a worldview that results in a different reaction to The Horrors, and also different ideas about where those horrors come from. It also means I can introduce information to the reader through one character, and then jump to another character faced with a situation where that information applies. If only the other character had been forthcoming!

Where it comes to character voice, I definitely want more practice. At this moment, I am primarily focused on simply putting new words on the page, so every character blends into the other a bit. Editing is where I will make this shine because I can polish the way each character speaks and also adjust not just how they see the world but what they are looking at.

I also wanted to develop strategies for opening chapters, and this is absolutely something that will take more practice and experimentation. I have adjusted my idea of the inciting incident, however. I had thought that, for example, in this book, the inciting incident was the quest for the Holy Grail. They start on the quest, so I thought that I was just skipping the mess of reaching the inciting incident. But then, after I wrote their first encounter with a monster, I realized I had been thinking about it wrong. The inciting incident is not just the thing that they are doing in this book – it is the thing that they are determined to do. Probably obvious to folks who have been writing for longer, and something I had perhaps been doing subconsciously, but this shade of difference will help me in future stories.

The Best motivation Is Knowing I Won’t Have to Do This Forever

I’ve already said it a few times, but for me, creating motivation is about making it as easy as possible to get started. I reduce the barriers to entry as much as possible so that my brain needs to do as little work as I can manage to get over the highest hump: the first few words.

I can’t keep going forever. This intensive workshop will end August 1, and at that point, I should have a completed novel draft. I will not just put it down but put it in a drawer and let myself forget about it a bit so that when I turn to editing, I will have fresh eyes. On August 1, I am going to force myself not to work for a while. I’ll read and replenish.

I’m really looking forward to having this novel done, because it’s going to be awesome! I’m really looking forward to, not just rest, but not thinking about this book. This work is not going to last forever, and that helps me immensely as I pick up the pen (keyboard) to start yet another day of work.