Flexing writing muscles after a long break
How to get the creative juices flowing after taking a writing break
Hello Hello! Hope you are all doing well and chugging along on your writing journeys.
Recently I have had to struggle fencing with the blank page and the blinking cursor while I sat down to write after a somewhat longish break.
For the last couple of weeks, there has been a bout of flu lingering about in the house and my body just wasn’t allowing me to write. So, I didn’t. I listened to my body and my mind and just relaxed, binged Netflix’s 3 body problem (if you have read the books and/or watched the show, please come say hi) and ate lots of soup.
But then when I am finally feeling a bit better, I put the bum in chair to get back to writing and for some reason, I have forgotten how to write.
The words just won’t come.
And all writers know very well how frustrating that can be.
Staring at the blank screen for ages, typing and deleting words endlessly, only to feel exhausted and have the ever agonising low self-esteem creep up again.
So instead of focusing on the creative, I doubled down on the analytic juices to hopefully find a solution.
Here’s what I did :
Theorise the problem : It’s always useful to have a working theory while tackling any sort of issue. Eventually it might be wrong but at least it helps lead the path. So, for my struggling words, I theorised that the lack of words was due to a lack of motivation to write.
Break it down : In my experience, asking the why question to dig into the problem helps. So, I asked myself why is there a lack of motivation? There is no single answer but here’s the possible ones.
No looming deadline.
Meandering plot of WIP
Perfectionist attitude and apparent plot holes
Overwhelming peer pressure
Constant worrying about how much time you wasted already
Remove the Obstacles : All the above potential issues stopping me to write were inside my head. So it was like I needed to stop thinking and just write. But there is one teeny tiny problem. It doesn’t work that way. If I can control what the mind thinks, I would achieve nirvana. But I have a little ( when I say little) work left there. So the only thing left to do is to divert the mind from the obstacles and focus on other creative things.
Divert the Mind : To do that, I tried multiple things.
Read books that inspired me to be a writer. For me they are - Around the world in 80 days, Little Women, Harry Potter series…….. Don’t worry I won’t name them all.
Exercise to clear the head. I prefer running, but I guess any physical exercise will do just as well.
Listen to some inspiring podcasts on writing — I particularly like Writing Excuses, Writers on writing, Story Magic (If anyone is interested to know more about a list of the most wonderful writing podcasts, comment below and I can share my list)
Listen to music or if you made a playlist for your book now is the time. I usually don’t make playlist for my books, so I listened to some classics that always put me in a good mood. My favorite are Sinatra and Rafi.
Try some writing exercises. There are a myriad sites where you can find writing exercises. Just google them. I personally like the homework writing exercises shared during the Writing Excuses podcast.
Sleep. People don’t give enough credit to sleeping. But for some reason my creative cells are reenergized during sleep and sometimes I get wonderful plot ideas while sleeping.
Reading poetry. In my not so humble opinion, poetry is a wonderful way to get your brain to dive deep into the psyche of the poet and find out the meaning of mere words. This helped me a great deal to overcome the analytical brain and release the creative one.
Well, there you do. Those are my full-proof ways to press the gas on my creativity as I get back to writing. Sometimes writing feels too difficult, but instead of giving up, finding ways to jumpstart the writing muscle is probably a better use of time.
Happy Writing!!!
