Have you lost your joy of writing? Are you wishing that writing fiction were fun again? You’re not alone.
Willian posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
Hello Randy,
As someone who deal with and help writers, you probably have a tip or two to overcome what I’m current facing.
I have been writing my whole life, since I was a little and learned to do it. Now, I find myself unable to do so.
For the past two three years, I have started books just throw them later on, I have thought about a hundreds stories that I would love to write, only to find I dislike them later on. I don’t know the reason for this, but right now I can’t feel the joy of writing that I felt years ago.
I thought it may be the genre or style and changed it, but it didn’t help. I thought it was because I was a pantser but outline didn’t help it.
Right now I’m at a loss, and don’t know how to overcome this. Any thoughts?
Thank you in advance and I loved your snowflake book =)
Randy sez: Wow, that’s a tough question. I suspect different writers write for different reasons, and so the joy of writing is different for different writers. I don’t know why you write or what motivates you.
What Works for Me
But I can tell you what I do when I feel the joy of writing fading.
When I start feeling that writing isn’t fun anymore, I go find a novel and read it. A good novel. One that’s fun to read. One that makes me believe I’m the protagonist of the story. One that takes me on an adventure.
Somewhere in the middle of the story, the author will make a decision I don’t like. And I’ll think, “I could have done that better.”
Maybe I really could have written it better. Maybe I’m just delusional. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that I’m reading a good story and feeling the desire to do it better myself. That’s what got me started writing fiction in the first place. That’s what gets me rolling again when I’m in a rut.
I can’t promise this will help you, Willian. All I can say is that it works for me.
What Do My Loyal Blog Readers Think?
Now I’ll throw this question out to my Loyal Blog Readers. How do you recover the joy of writing when you’ve lost it?
Got a Question for My Blog?
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.
Postscript
As a postscript, it’s worth noting that the audiobook version of my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, is available on all the usual places–Audible, Amazon, and Apple’s iTunes Store. In all the fuss over the new GDPR a few weeks ago, I got a bit off track in my blogging, and so I haven’t taken note of it here on my blog yet. So now I am.
Here are links to all the places you can now buy the book, whether in e-book, paper, or audiobook format:
