So, You Don’t Feel Like Writing
Five Suggestions to Get Back in Gear
If you’ve clicked on this post, perhaps you’ve looked at the title and thought, “Yeah, I sure don’t feel like writing.” And, for the sake of getting down to business, I’m going to talk to you like you’ve already gone through the whole rigamarole of asking yourself, Do I simply need a day off? or Is it that competing priorities have zapped all my attention? or Should I be researching or editing instead?
Because this post isn’t to go on a quasi-philosophical tangent about how you need to be gentle with yourself and take advantage of rest when you can and how sometimes the lack of motivation stems from a lack of rest. That’s not what we’re here for today.
Today, I’m writing for the folks who want to be writing, know they have the time and energy, yet aren’t. For whatever reason(s), you are stuck staring at a blank Word document. You’re spending more time looking out the window wracking your brain for an idea than you are scribbling sentences. You may even be doomscrolling because you’re that discouraged or unmotivated.
It happens to the best of us, and it absolutely doesn’t mean your writing session should be scraped for the day. Take a deep breath, ease up on the pressure you’ve put on yourself, and begin warming up.
A writer’s warm-up, in this case where you’re not sure what to start writing, is two-fold. It’s meant to get you going on two different fronts, which brings me to my first suggestion.
Take yourself on a little toodle.
Lately, I’ve been using that word—toodle—when I tell the dog (his name is Larry) I’m taking him for a short walk. He’s getting older, is starting to be troubled by arthritis, and shouldn’t be over-extending himself on a proper walk. Same goes for you. It’s not meant to derail the time and focus you wanted to direct to your writing. You’re not shifting activities. The point of a toodle isn’t to suddenly be exercising, though moving your body is helpful in moving your mind.
Larry needs to keep his joints from locking up just like you need to keep your ability to think creatively from stagnating. Science has shown—and I wrote a whole blog post about this at the beginning of the year titled, “Activity, Meet Creativity”—there’s a connection between aerobic exercise and neuron production, and it’s a positive one. Aerobic movement is going to boost your imagination, which is precisely what you need when you feel stuck.
Give yourself ten minutes, don’t put headphones in to listen to a podcast or music, and take yourself on a little toodle. Then, once you get back and are ready to sit down in front of your notebook or computer, you’re ready for the other step in the warm-up.
2. Write a letter to a friend regarding what’s going on with your project.
Instead of just jumping right into dumping out words for your story, you’re going to ease into the act of writing by doing this activity that’s story-adjacent. Though, if ideas happened to pop into your head while you were out toodling, make sure to quick jot those down so you can get to them when you’re ready.
Here’s the thing about this letter: you’re not going to be sending it. You’re not writing it so that another set of eyes will land on it and comprehend your thoughts. What you’re doing is starting to get the mental gears turning. You’ve warmed up your body, in a way, and that’s helped to get your mind going. Now you’re really going to engage with that idea of movement by getting words out one and at a time.
Why not go right into your story, you ask? It’s because you need to give yourself the space to, essentially, word vomit in a low-stakes way so that your word vomit doesn’t appear in your draft and create more work for you down the road with revisions. I think about it like how, when I was in school writing essays, someone told me that your introduction doesn’t truly start until about the second or third paragraph. The first one or two paragraphs are, usually, just the warm-up to the idea you really want to be writing about, the things you actually want to be saying.
You may also still be feeling stuck as to where your story should be going or what scene you want to write next, so you can give voice to those frustrations in your letter. Explain why a character has stagnated or the action scene you’ve plotted is giving you a hard time. Write generally about where you’re hoping this story is going because, by reexamining the arc, you may pick out weak points or just better understand what you’re building toward.
Get off your chest, too, if there’s anything from your life that’s eating up your focus. Putting it down on paper in a separate capacity can be like mentally setting it aside for as long as it takes you to get a little work done.
Then, once your letter is finished, you’re ready to get into your story.
But what if you’re still not sure what to write? What if you just don’t have the motivation to work on your story today?
Well, at some point, you’re going to have push past that, be disciplined—maybe even a little stern with yourself—and buckle down. But let’s say that you’re in need of more of my suggestions of what to do next. After all, I still have three of them I promised in the subtitle of this post.
All three of these require setting timers and your absolute best intentions. There will be no scrolling Instagram. There will be no queuing up of songs for a curated writing playlist. You’ve gotta give them your best effort.
So, here’s what you could do first:
3. Speed-read a strange story from history.
You have a few choices with this one, but you’re going to visit one of these websites:
You’re going to pick the first story on the homepage that even just a little piques your interest. The point of this isn’t to waste time on the internet. Choose the piece, set your time for 15 minutes, and start reading. Take simple notes on the details that jump out to you. Skim if you have to; it’s okay. Let your curiosity and imagination latch onto any ideas that emerge.
When your timer goes off, reset it for another 15 minutes. Now’s the time for you to write—badly, imperfectly, oddly—about what you took notes on and what history may have given you for inspiration. If you can, you should do this writing with a pen/pencil and physical paper. The act of physically writing has also been proven to be better for creativity.
Another suggestion I have for a writing prompt is this:
4. Start with an already-formed sentence.
Grab whatever book is nearest to you. Open it to any page and point at random. Whatever sentence your finger has landed on is now the first sentence of this writing exercise. Copy it onto your paper, set your timer for 30 minutes, and see what you come up with.
Here’s the sentence I got from trying this out: “I blush when I recall how often I’d drunkenly slow dance with his black leather jacket, moving back and forth across the ravaged wood floor of the apartment, ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ playing on our boom box” (After Francesco, 167). Feel free to use it, too, if you like.
And now for my final suggestion.
5. Let an image speak a thousand words to you.
I’ve got another website for you to visit for this prompt, and it’s to a digital Random Classic Art Gallery, Random-ize. When you’re feeling stuck or unmotivated, no one said you have to come up with all the creativity on your own. It’s absolutely okay to let other artists inspire you. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary. Art should build upon art. Art exists not in a vacuum, and the physical manifestations of it evoke questions from us or call to mind old memories or poke sharply at emotions we’d rather not look at.
In this instance, get yourself a randomized piece of classic artwork, give yourself 10 minutes on that handy timer of yours, and just observe the piece. Write down, in as simple language as you need, what comes to mind as you look at it. What story does the subject seem to be telling? Is something happening in the background that could spark an idea? Do you happen to know something about the artist already and want to write about them, forget whatever their work is encompassing? You decide.
Ten minutes and then reset the timer, this time for 20 minutes. Aim for writing at least a page based on the idea(s) that cropped up from your little viewing session.
With all of these prompts, you can decide, when your timer’s done, if you’ve started an exercise you want to carry on with, if you’re ready to pivot to your own story, or if you’re finished for the day. Remember the whole point of giving one of these suggestions your best, focused effort is because you didn’t feel like writing in the first place, so any bit of writing you’ve been able to do is good. If it lends itself to momentum and you continuing to lean into what you’ve started, so much the better.
I wish you luck and joy with however you go about your writing sessions and whatever it may be you’re tackling. Because even 20 minutes is something. Even coming up with a little scene that isn’t directly connected to your story is still practice.
Keep at it, friend, and catch ya back here next week!