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.