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The last few days I haven’t felt like doing my Story a Days.  Anyone else hitting a mid-month slump?  I’d hoped to do a lot more, I guess.  I mean, I like what I’ve written I’m just not feeling a whole lot of motivation to write up something.  My output and enthusiasm at the beginning of the month were great, and I’ve lost some of it.  I need to find that happy go-get-it attitude again.  I’m beginning to contemplate a new short story contest so maybe I’ll write up one of my ideas today and post that instead.  I am feeling a bit inspired on that front right now.

Is anyone else feeling discouraged?  Are you meeting your goals?  How’s your writing going?

I will say that besides NaNoWriMo, my average output hasn’t been this good.  I’ve been pretty disciplined; I have my own novel I want to finish – in twelve days, a book I’m critiquing, and then my short stories, blog posts, reading and other non-writerly things I do.  Some of the non-writer things have suffered.  This is temporary.  Like books? I think I’ve read three or four so far this month.  For me that’s not a lot.  Granted one book I was reading dragged on for eternity.

My writing has been good and bad.  I’ve realized that when I don’t feel inspired or motivated by a project it simply – sucks.  In my opinion.  I know the mechanics of writing and I should be able to do it easily but without that added spark of personality it’s – eh.

What do you do to combat being discouraged? Unmotivated? Writers block?

Being discouraged is hard for me.  I can write through writer’s block easily because in my head it’s like putting beads on a string; there’s a pattern to it and as long as I know where the end is I can write through writer’s block.  Being unmotivated, especially when I’m trying to do a short story every day, is very difficult.  Being unmotivated, my creativity is lazy and doesn’t produce for me.  That’s when I have real problems.  I lean on prompts to jump start me and those posts have all been – weird.

So, now that I’ve talked about being discouraged, I want to get encouraged.

Today I want to find five things that inspire me.  Things that make me sit back and think or amaze me.  People, objects, pictures, whatever that is – I want to find five things I can point at in my head and say – wow.  And then I want to use that inspiration to inspire and encourage me; maybe I’ll even write about them.  The five inspirations…. I think I just got inspired.