Here are some things to jump-start your writing motivation. |more articles here

There is no substitute for you

 

Even if you are writing something that is technical and nonfiction, whatever you produce will have your attributes and personality stamped all over it. There is no substitute for you.

People don’t reach for something to read because they want to read something exactly like they’ve already read before, they want to read something different, something new.

Even if it’s in a genre with a lot of tropes, little bits that you have to include in there to keep your readers happy, still that’s you stamped all over it and that’s a very very good thing.

Your original writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, is so important that US copyright law continues the copyright for your work for 70 years after your death.

 

You can be building a legacy

You can be building a legacy, both of your body of work and of income. A legacy that will be paying you within your lifetime in the form of royalties and beyond your lifetime to your family and whoever you designate as your heirs.

We are talking about that ever elusive, holy grail type substance known as passive income, a term that is batted around constantly all over the web but is a fact of every successful writer’s life. This is a major motivating force for many writers.

One of the huge benefits of royalty income from your writing is that it frees up your time to do more writing. It is a beneficial snowball effect. Bringing in royalties is just a great thing to see showing up in your accounts. More on this in another blog post.

Writing Can be Self Actualization

 

Another major motivator in the writing world is a feeling that you can only get when you are writing, especially when you are in the flow. It is this feeling that you know you are doing the right thing with your time, right now. In its highest sense it is what some call self-actualization. There is no substitute for it. This comes about whether or not you’re writing is popular or becomes successful during your lifetime. In fact there are many examples of writing that became wildly successful after the writer’s death.

A good example of this is the writing of JRR Tolkien. His Lord of the rings series was mildly successful in his lifetime and wildly successful in recent years. I wonder how his heirs feel about that?

Tolkien wrote as a labor of love

Nevertheless, Tolkien wrote as a labor of love, there is no doubt about that. He took absolutely no shortcuts with the Lord of the rings, even to the extent of creating new languages and new scripts for writing those languages, and then using them in his books. No doubt he had tremendous satisfaction from his writing and seeing his books in print and beginning to be popular during his lifetime.

Still his works have gone on and spawned entire new genres of books and movies and costuming and even subcultures. Not bad for just putting pen to paper, right?

This may seem a bit counter-intuitive regarding staying motivated with your writing, but here it is:

Writing is hard and that’s a good thing

 

Writing is hard and that’s a good thing. If creating using your mind to produce words in forms that are useful and/or enjoyable was easy, then everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?

Clearly you hear the call

 

Many people think that they can’t write. Clearly you hear the call, and that’s why you are reading this. That means you can write. And that the writing is hard is a good thing because the struggle, the difficulty of it is where the joy comes from also. You as the writer will know what you went through to create what you have created. You know when and where what where your situations what your situation was at the time, your mental state and more.

Just taking Tolkien as an example again, so much of what he wrote was during WW2 when Britain was being bombed. What was it like to be writing what is considered a fantasy or a children’s story at the time of being bombed and possible invasion? What a contrast!

And yet enormous success came out of it. Can you imagine how few people he knew that he could have talked to about this work in progress? How many people could even have begun to fathom what he was doing?

It may very well be the same with you

It may very well be the same with you and your writing ideas, your writing ambitions. But there is no way to know except by keeping the motivation, keeping going, keeping writing and putting the stuff out.

So much of writing is something new to the world, and that is a very good thing. And yet people in general don’t immediately take to new things in their lives.

If it is new, then it is most likely to be rejected over and over again, at first. The Harry Potter series are a great example of this. J.K. Rowling went through 12 rejections before a publisher accepted her first book.

We Are Living in a Writers Paradise

 

Another thing to keep in mind to keep your writing motivation up is that compared to times before now, we are living in a writer’s paradise.

The bar for publication of your work has been lowered to almost zero in many places.

You don’t have to wait for your writing to be accepted – you can publish it yourself on major platforms now. Writing your own blogs is even faster with total freedom of output.

Other forms of writing besides “print” writing, such as songwriting for example, can be submitted to music publishing companies and at least commented upon within a few short days, if not accepted. Even. in the music world the monolithic structures have fallen, hallelujah!

Freelance writers have numerous outlets to be paid for their work, often getting started on the same day that they are hired.

Writers who know some graphics tricks can easily crank out low content books such as journals and planners.

The list goes on and on.

Writing is Daring

 

Dare to write. This quote by Helen Keller is so fantastic:

“Security Is Mostly A Superstition. Life Is Either A Daring Adventure Or Nothing.”

Writing could be and should be a daring adventure for you . If it’s not, then it’s time to ramp up your enthusiasm and your output which in turn will ramp up your energy and enthusiasm.

The way this world works is that if you go for security, then your options are limited.

If you go for adventure in your writing life, then there is no limit. People can sense if there is juice in your writing and they respond to that. Read on throughout this site for more energy, more juice, for tips on writing motivation.