(I know this thread has been up for months, but I wrote most of this back when it was new and figured maybe someone would want it even if it's way later now so I decided to actually finish.)
Motivation is a problem for pretty much all writers, and there's really no magic solution. You'll hear beginning writers and non-writers saying things like "oh, just wait until you get inspired again!" but that's really not how it works! Inspiration isn't a thing that just falls into your lap, in general (or if it is, it's still very finicky and inconvenient), you have to call to it. And you can do that by sitting down and writing!
Have you ever read anything about lucid dreaming? The key to recognizing while you're dreaming is doing things so that you
think about your dreams. Lots of people don't really remember their dreams, push them aside in the morning, and immediately forget about them for the rest of the day (frequently the rest of forever) once they get up. It's the same concept with writing and inspiration. If you think about your writing frequently, you'll think of new ideas and new ways to word the things you want to say, and sometimes you'll even
want to sit down and write. And the best way to do this is to write! If you write frequently, you'll think about it frequently. For instance, if you write every day, you'll be focused on thinking about your writing for at least a short time
every day. This has a huge effect on the actual writing, and even on motivation! And generally, you're thinking about it before you start for the day, and after your session is over, too, planning and preparing for the next one. This is a big part of why NaNoWriMo is actually useful! It gets you
thinking.
If you pay attention, you might notice that the writers who feel they really don't need to write every day (or even necessarily that often) tend to think about their writing all the time regardless. But it's easy to get caught up in real life, and that's when using strategies to make you think more is useful.
It doesn't even particularly matter what you write, really! Writing
something gets you thinking about writing in general, and that helps with all of your other writing! It's best for a specific bit of writing if you're thinking about it specifically, yes, but writing at all helps a lot. If you're scared of one piece of writing, you can use this to your advantage and do something else for a while!
So the big thing is to just sit down and force yourself to write for a bit. If you do that a lot, it starts becoming easier and easier, and you start writing more and feeling better about yourself and your work, and it's easier to keep going!
There are a few other things that can help you to get started, though!
-Talk to someone!
This may or may not actually be an option (or it may not feel like an option), but if it is, it can be very helpful (and if it isn't, maybe you should make it one!). If you have someone you're comfortable enough talking to, that can be much less scary than a blank page, and you can let your ideas flow without worrying about bad writing or messing things up! Occasionally they can even offer useful input!
If talking to someone is completely impossible, a journal is a good substitute! It's nice just to get your ideas down outside of an actual storytelling format, and collecting all the problems and possible solutions and just
things that you've thought of so far can go a long way toward helping you figure things out.
-Switch mediums!
Do you generally use the computer, or pencil and paper? Try the other one for a while! If the one you're using is difficult and spooky, swapping might make things easier! Maybe you're using a notebook and you're tired of the pencil smearing and of the idea of having to type this all up later. Maybe you're using Word and the blank document is the most intimidating thing ever. If you usually have a preference, that's fine, and
usually using that preference is fine, but doing something new for a while can give you a little perspective and make things a little more interesting again!
Other things that might feel different for you are E-mails (you can write them to yourself if you want!) an online or offline journal, crayons, or the back of a Kleenex box. Changing scenery might help, too!
-Something routine!
Doing something just a little differently every time you write might also help you to get in the mood for writing! If you always wear headphones or a hat, or drink orange juice, or go sit out on the deck, or leave your door open, doing that thing can sometimes trick your brain into feeling like writing! It doesn't have to be practical, but if it is, all the better. For instance if you're more comfortable with a closed door, opening it when you write might help, because then you feel like you can't do silly distracting things, and getting up to close it automatically or starting to do something silly might remind you "oh, right, it's not time for that, I need to get back to writing." Headphones could be practical if they block out distracting noises. Turning the air conditioning in your room all the way up might help so that you want to finish your writing so you won't be cold anymore.
-Sprints!
Having a certain, small amount of time where you have to focus on the writing and nothing else can be really useful for actually getting something done. If you give yourself all day to write and that's it, you feel like you have plenty of time to browse the Internet, wander around the house, and basically do everything you can think of besides writing. Short sprints (about ten to thirty minutes) where you try to write as many words as possible within the time limit, can really help to focus for a little bit. If you want to do something else, you can just look at the clock and go “oh, just a few more minutes,” and then go back to writing. If you're having a really hard time thinking of what to write next and don't write that many words, that's okay! It's still more than if you had just browsed the Internet the whole time, or even if you actually get zero words down, it can go a long way toward helping you actually
think about the writing, and then maybe you'll be able to write something soon! It can help even more if you have a friend to do the sprint with, just to give you an extra push to stay on the ball, and someone to compare numbers with.
-Group-writing!
On that note, having friends to write with can really boost morale! Writing can get really lonely, and it's nice to know that there are others doing the same thing you are, even if you don't really talk to them! This is another useful aspect of NaNoWriMo – you know that there are thousands of people, all experiencing the same obstacles you are!
It can also be really helpful to have competition! It doesn't even matter if your goals are different from your friends' goals. Even if your friend writes ten thousand words a day, and you only write five hundred, you can still compare notes on how you reached your goal, whether or not you even did, and what challenges there were along the way! And you can still do sprints together and talk about writing together!
Someone you're writing with doesn't even necessarily have to be a friend, just someone that you can talk to about writing, even if it's just to share how much you wrote that day or to do sprints.
-Remove distractions!
When you start writing, what is it that distracts you? Is it your little sister? Is it your gameboy? Is it starting to get hungry and getting up to get snacks? As you write, make a note of these things, and figure out how to remove them or improve them. If your little sister always comes in to bother you, maybe you could figure out a better time for writing when she's not around, or make an agreement with her that she gets some kind of reward like you playing a game with her later if she leaves you alone for now, or give her a distraction. If something like a gameboy is always sitting around trying to get your attention, put it away before you start writing. If you're feeling peckish, decide a good goal to finish before you can eat. Maybe you need a thousand words for the day and if you get five hundred you can go make yourself a sandwich. Maybe you really just want crackers, so you eat a cracker every hundred words.
The Internet especially is a huge distraction! But if turning it off feels really extreme, you can set barriers instead! Just keeping a tab open in your browser that says "Go back to writing!" can help quite a bit. Sometimes you'll just bypass the tab, but sometimes you won't, too.
-Rewards!
Rewards like crackers can help quite a bit for motivation! Figure out what kind of reward motivates you the most, and what kind of reward is actually reasonable. It isn't reasonable to reward yourself with a ski trip every hundred words. It
might be reasonable to do so after you finish a huge goal like a book, but if you only have huge rewards for huge goals, they'll seem distant and impossible, and they won't really help very much! Small short-term goals and small rewards are more motivating because they're possible
now. The fifty thousand for your ski trip could take forever! The one hundred words for a cracker or a piece of chocolate is entirely achievable and you can do it
now. Big rewards aren't terribly useful to begin with; if your goal is big enough to justify a big reward like that, completing the goal probably feels amazing enough on its own. Small rewards may not seem like much incentive, but they can help quite a bit if you're struggling! NaNoWriMo is right after Halloween, so when I did that, I did a lot of candy incentives. I don't even care for candy that much, but it was really helpful to just go "okay, just x more words until I can have this." I didn't do it all the time because I didn't need to (and I didn't have
that much candy anyway), but when I started struggling I'd make up a word count goal and then put the piece of candy on my desk. Every time I'd start to get distracted and look away, the piece of candy would serve as a quick reminder. If you make a reminder of what the reward will be like that, it helps even more! Every reminder helps a little bit, because it's really very easy to get distracted.
-Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.
Finally, deadlines! Deadlines really help, because they give you something to aim for. If your goal is "x words... someday," what motivation do you have to write
today? There are so many people in the world who have the goal to write a book
someday, but they never, ever start. “Oh, maybe when I finish school,” they think, or “Maybe when the kids move out.” But as soon as that happens, there's a new excuse, and you'll always always have a reason why you can't write right now, even if it's just "oh, but I don't really feel like it."
But you can! The expression “if you want to get something done, ask a busy person,” exists for a reason. Busy people are more accustomed to compartmentalizing their lives, so they can more easily fit writing into a schedule. Additionally, if you're
not busy, you'll tend to put things off, maybe indefinitely if you don't have any kind of deadline. Even if your deadline is something like x words by midnight (though I wouldn't really recommend a strict by-midnight goal because if you're likely to stay up that long or past that, it's kind of scary, and if you procrastinate or just have trouble writing that day it's easy to not meet it and decrease morale), even if you have your work document open before the sun comes out and have nothing better to do all day, it's pretty likely you won't have too much done even by ten o'clock. But if you only have a few hours a day open for writing, it's easier to just write in that time period, because there just isn't time to go “oh, I can do it later.”
Additionally, writers aren't writers because they have tons of free time. Writers are regular people with regular, busy lives – they frequently have jobs, and kids, and friends, and school to deal with. Even people who write professionally frequently have to have a side job, because in general publishing books simply isn't really enough to pay the bills. Tons of people who go to school or have a job in November manage to do NaNoWriMo, too. Even if you're busy, you can pretty much always find a little bit of free time – even if it's just on the bus to school! – and you can use that time for writing.
Some of these small things are a little more useful for speed writing, which isn't
necessarily what you want to be doing, but is a pretty good idea when you're lacking motivation and aren't sure where to start. There are definitely writers who do just fine without deadlines and goals, but if you feel like you're one of those writers and everything's going fine without speedwriting elements, you can just stop using those. It isn't dangerous, it's just a thing to try that works really well for a lot of people and that you can stop doing any time if it doesn't happen to be working for you!
Having trouble writing just means you're a regular person who finds actually writing to be really hard work, and you just need to create some incentives!
This is a good idea... maybe this could help me get past the current spot I'm working on. I just don't like the scene; it's too contrived and strange, but I don't want to stop to revise it. So maybe I'll just finish a sketch of it quickly and move on.
Sometimes what I do instead of actually revising is write "okay, actually this and this happened instead" and then continue as if that had happened instead of what I actually wrote! It's useful in general to just not revise right away - that's frequently a thing that makes people not feel like writing!
I like that idea too. For a while I had a plan to write a page a day in this journal that I have, but that fell through.
How organized were you about the plan? Did you actually start writing in it every day, or was it a vague future thing?
Maybe you could write the journal at a certain time each day, or organize a small reward system! Also something that helps for me is to actually keep track of something like this, for instance on a calendar! Then if you miss a day you have to write that down, and it messes up the record.
I always have something that looks like this at the bottom of word documents, for example:
11-1-10 3377 words
11-2-10 2022 words
11-3-10 2010 words
11-4-10 2342 words
(et cetera)
[...] I'll be reading someone else's book and I'll go, That would be the perfect way to fix my magical being, to do it like this author did. But then that's plagiarizing, so I don't write it, and once I see someone else's idea that would fit so perfectly, I have such a hard time coming up with my own solution because none of mine seem as well-suited as what I read about. But I obviously don't want to commit plagiarism.
I have that happen to me, too!
Maybe something you could do is write about it (in something like a journal) or talk through it with someone, and detail the reasons why that specific thing works so well, and try to think of some alternate solutions and explain why those ones won't work as well! Just having all that written down can help you think straight and maybe you'll think of something new!
Alternatively, you could try just writing it while using that idea! Ideas can change a
lot when you actually write them, and even if it doesn't, you might be able to write enough from that "plagiarized" idea that you can figure out a new solution to the problem!
(also, maybe think about whether or not it's
really plagiarism - even if an idea seems unique or really specific, you can often find it in other things!)
Sorry for the super-late post but maybe it's still useful!
