Roundtable: What Motivates Us to Write?

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Today is National Tell Your Story Day, so we had a chat about strategies and self-motivators that help us tell our stories!

The contributors to the discussion are: Cedar, Nina Waters, H. Armstrong, jumblejen, Shea Sullivan, Mikki Madison, Sage Mooreland, Tris Lawrence, Lucy K.R., Shadaras, boneturtle, JD Rivers, Shannon, theirprofoundbond, Dei Walker, Merlin Grey, Sanne and an anonymous contributor.

Words We Motivate Ourselves With

Cedar: “You get to watch the number go up” and “Write for 5 minutes and then you get a treat.” Those are my main two lol. I treat my brain like a kid and reward it when it lets me write.

Nina Waters: “It’ll feel good once I start typing, so I just gotta start typing” and “It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be written.”

H. Armstrong: Some days writing is hard, and it’s okay. These are some of the phrases I tell myself when it’s one of those days:

“You just need to write a single word, nothing else”; “Writing down thoughts for this next scene or for future me to edit is also writing and helps the process.”; “It’s okay to take breaks, let brain recharge, make it an official Rest Day and try again another day.” And when things get real dire: “You will write again.”

jumblejen : That last bit is so important to remember! You will write again. “It’ll come ’round again,” is what I say to myself when I hit a particularly rough patch.

Shea Sullivan: Single word has changed my life. That was my rule for Nano one year (when everything was nuts and writing felt impossible) and I think I got 12k words.

Mikki Madison: I would tell myself constantly (during NaNo especially, RIP) “quantity, not quality,” as well as “any words are more words than you had at the beginning of the month.”

Sage Mooreland: “The only goal of the first draft is to exist. If it does that, it’s perfect by definition.”

Tris Lawrence: “While you’re writing it, no one needs to love this story but you. Have fun with it.”

Sage Mooreland: “Write by hand. Type it into notes. Speak it via talk to text. It doesn’t matter if it’s one sentence or it takes off into a whole thing. The point is to give yourself the outlet instead of holding it in.”; “No one but you ever has to see what you write. You don’t have to write for literally anyone else.”

Lucy K.R.: “You have to keep writing to write your next best story” gets me going sometimes! It’s easy to look at past successes and wonder how it happened, but the answer is always “you just typed it, you can do it again.”

Shadaras: “Just one sentence,” yeah, and also “It’ll be so fun to show this to my friends” (sometimes via the cheat code of “just narrate the gist of the story into discord chat while your friends leave emoji reacts and/or add their own thoughts, and decide later if you want to clean it up”)

boneturtle: i love this. i’ve also written my stories to my friends in discord first and cleaned them up after, it’s not only really fun but also a great way to get feedback in real time if something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t hit the way you expected.

Shadaras: Or to lean in to things which hit harder than expected!

JD Rivers: “I want to read the full story” plain and simple

Shannon: “It’s gonna bother me more if I don’t” happens a lot. kind of in the same vein as “I want to read the full story”, it’s going to keep nudging me until I just do it

jumblejen : “If you want this idea to stop haunting you, you have to actually write the story.” Also, “If you want to have stories to submit for publication you have to, you know, write them.”

theirprofoundbond: For general motivation, I tell myself, “You’re the only one who can write these exact stories.” On low wordcount days, I tell myself, “Hey, [low number] is better than 0!”

Dei Walker: “dare mighty things” (which I pulled out of Sandra Tayler’s Structuring Life to Support Creativity) – no one’s going to write this in this way except for me, and if I’m going to fail, I want to do it spectacularly. and if I don’t try, it’s not going to happen.

“fifteen minutes” – because usually I can get something started, and then build that momentum, if I give myself 15 minutes of focused writing time, not faffing-around-online time, not distracting myself or procrastinating. and if I can’t get going in 15 minutes, I have tried, and can come back and try again later.

“you can’t edit a blank page” – even if it’s awful, even if I hate it, I can’t fix it until it’s there. so I owe it to myself and my ideas to get those words out onto a page, and then I can make them better.

Merlin Grey: “You can’t edit a blank page” is a good one! I also tell myself “It can’t be good until it exists.”

Other Motivational Strategies

Sanne: Does external motivation count? I try to share ideas with friends, who can then hype me up, and then I can use that to motivate myself! “I’ve told my friend about this story idea and they want to read it, so let’s get it written so they can!”

boneturtle: i think external motivation definitely counts. these days i can only get words down if it’s for a submission deadline or a contract deadline; i want to write more, but it’s really hard to convince myself it’s a good use of time unless i have someone else counting on me.

Cedar: Another one that gets me is one of my partners shaking me by the shoulders saying “write it or i’m going to fight you.” Always good to have outside support

jumblejen : I’m of two minds. On the one hand, the urge to write is sometimes so strong that it isn’t so much a concern over motivation, it’s trying to hold onto that energy until I have the time/ability to write.

On the other hand, I have taken out some of the need for independent motivation by having a dedicated writing time. I work full-time at a non-writing job, so I don’t have a lot of time to write in my day-to-day. A friend hosts a weekly zoom for writing every Saturday morning and I’ve been joining them for about 5 years now. I show up and give it a good try, and more often than not, get some good words (or editing) in.

I also try to really listen to myself and ensure that if I truly need a break, I let myself have one so I don’t hit burnout.

Merlin Grey: Having a writing community definitely helps for me. With all of my ideas, it starts out as something burning inside of me that I have to get out and onto paper. Yet once I actually start writing my story, I often begin to question whether it’s actually any good—whether I’m executing my ideas well, or even whether the idea is worth writing in the first place. Having friends (online or IRL) to bounce ideas off of and get feedback from, or just generally cheer me on has been the most helpful thing for me. I was in a fandom writing server for a while (which sadly seems to be dying now), and last year I found an offline writing group in my area that I go to every other week to work on original fiction. Writing with other people—whether it’s in the writing group or running sprints online—helps me feel less alone in what I’m doing, and also helps me stay focused. I’ve also started using 4thewords, which is a game where you defeat monsters by writing a certain number of words in a certain amount of time. It’s been the most helpful specifically for pushing through doubt about whether my writing is any good and just getting words on paper. Because even if everything I’m writing is absolute garbage, I just need to get 500 more words down so I can defeat this last monster and get a cool hat for my avatar. Then later, I have a draft that I can come back to and work on polishing. (You can cut the 4thewords part from the social media post if it seems to much like an advertisement. But it honestly has been helpful in motivating me.)

(Also, the fiction writing group I go to is on Tuesday evenings, every other week. But there’s apparently a nonfiction writing workshop on Tuesday evenings at the same time on the alternate weeks. So people kept telling me “Oh, if this day and time is good for you then you should come to the nonfiction workshop too, on the other weeks,” and I kept thinking uh, nonfiction and fiction are very different; it seems strange to go to a workshop just because the timing is convenient, but I finally caved and tried it out. It was honestly a lot more fun than I expected! Our latest session focused on humor in creative nonfiction—and how that can take different forms in an essay versus a piece of travel writing—and it was really interesting. So I feel like that just speaks even more for the power of community in motivation, if it got me thinking about trying out a different type of writing.)

Anonymous: I have a few strategies when it comes to motivation.

If my motivation is flagging but I still love the story, I tend to need structural fixes: check the outline, rewrite it if necessary. If it feels like I’m hitting a wall outright, I’ll rubber duck to figure out why that is–usually it’s a plot or character issue from two chapters ago, and talking it through can help me locate and fix it so that I can get back to the writing.

On days when I end up blank staring at the document, I set a timer for however long, and tell myself that I have to write one word. Just one. Almost always, that one word ends up connected to a sentence that is connected to a paragraph, and I get a decent amount of writing done. On the rare days where my fingers are twitching towards the delete key because I feel like it’s all terrible, I close everything and walk away, because I know it’s not as bad as I think it is in the moment. Even if it was, that’s what editing is for. I just come back tomorrow, and try again.

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Why We Love to Write: A Roundtable Chat for “I Love to Write” Day

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1. Why do you love writing?

Adrian Harley: Ironically, it’s hard to put into words how much fun writing is. Inventing worlds, characters, and stories—even just coming up with a fun turn of phrase—has some of that same joy as playing make-believe on a playground as a kid. There’s something so free about it.

Rascal Hartley: It’s really hard to articulate. It’s the difference between telling someone “this is how this feels” and just plucking the emotion straight from my chest and dropping it directly into theirs. I’d explode if I ever stopped, I think. I love it because it keeps me from exploding.

Anonymous #1: I love writing because I love art. I love creation. I consider myself less a “writer” and more an “artist”, and sometimes my chosen medium is words. I love how playful you can get with language (e.g. Carroll, Joyce), how you can paint beautiful scenes without using any colors, and how all of that can translate differently depending on individual perception. As an artist who works in different mediums, I hold a lot of respect for writing and story-telling in all forms.

boneturtle: Writing is how I think, how my thoughts turn from vague impressions to concrete ideas. For me it’s not so much why I love writing, but what I would do if I couldn’t write. I depend on it for connection, both to others and to my own thoughts.

Lucy K.R.: Writing provides me with a place to gain clarity on the world I’m experiencing, and to share that clarity with others. No matter how silly or serious the subject matter, putting words to experiences gives you a power over those experiences.

Puck: It’s the form of expression that comes easiest to me. I love language, both from the perspective of a linguist and from the perspective of an artist—the melody of a well-constructed sentence as much as its power to shape reality.

Sage Mooreland: The connection created by putting words on a page is the food for my soul that I’ve craved since I was little. The moment I figured out I could connect to people, that I could say things for other people to think about with the wrappings of something beautiful, I was hooked. One of my favorite professors once said, “I like writing because, if you properly back up your point, nobody can tell you that you’re wrong.” While she was referring (mostly) to the sort of academic writing one does in college and professional writing beyond that, I find that it applies across into my creative writing. That sort of freedom is what I adore.

S. J. Ralston: Writing is how I talk about the things I don’t know how to talk about. When it’s too big, too painful, too strange, too personal to say it in so many words, it goes into the writing.

Dev: I love the satisfaction in finally capturing the scene in your head on the paper (or screen) in a way that feels the same as you’d imagined. That moment when it clicks is what I live for.

Anonymous #2: Because I can make the words dance in ways that feel natural to me in a way that music or visual arts never did. We are the storytelling animals. That’s what differentiates us from everything else that communicates. Taking part in that tradition helps me feel connected to people.

2. What’s your favorite aspect of writing and why?

jumblejen: Discovering what my unconscious has been chewing on for who-knows-how-long! I found after I started writing that certain themes would show up that were clearly mental health things my brain wanted to work on but wasn’t telling me about. 2nd favorite thing is finding out what’s going to happen next! I am a discovery writer, which means I don’t plan out my works (it can all get fixed in editing as needed). Love being genuinely surprised by the twists I don’t know about until they appear on the page.

Adrian Harley: My favorite bit is that moment when I suddenly figure out a really cool connection between two previously unrelated parts of a story or think of a new idea that immediately improves the whole story. Whether it’s solving a plot problem or forcing new, worse problems on my poor protagonists, it’s always so satisfying when things go “click.”

Rascal Hartley: My faaaavorite part is when I’m drafting and a character just reveals something I had no notions of or intentions to include. So I guess characterization. I love these little guys (gn).

Anonymous #1: I’m a world-builder-holic. You can always catch me spinning off these grand universes with broad mythical strokes and teeny tiny daily minutiae, every single aspect of that is beyond fun for me. Sometimes I spend so much time thinking about the world, I forget about silly little things like “plots” and “continuity” lol.

boneturtle: My favorite aspect of writing is similar to Rascal’s description of why they love writing. The ability to create an impression that gives people an emotional experience, rather than explaining it to them. You can connect with people on a visceral level, through words. It’s sort of unbelievable.

Lucy K.R.: The Flow State is always my favorite part, though it is hard to access. When a story really takes over, and my fingers know what they’re doing seemingly without input from me—the world spinning itself into existence out of threads of thought… I think that’s the closest I’ll come in this lifetime to experiencing magic.

Puck: I love that moment in a 2nd draft or edit where I suddenly realize “No, this is where the story is going” or “here is where to place the parallel that’s going to really hit“

Sage Mooreland: I’m a world builder to the core. Like. I could happily build worlds for friends’ stories or RPGs and be endlessly happy. Being able to create the world I want to live in (as an example), where I can ease bigotry and oppression to a level that’s…well, not the world we live in. I can give voices to people who don’t have them, and I can build them in the forms that can help people either see themselves or maybe understand better what it’s like to be that person. The satisfaction of creating that kind of world is my jam.

S. J. Ralston: Favorite aspect is finding the shape of the story. When you come up out of the fog and the wander and finally you can see the whole thing at once and it’s not just a bunch of words, it’s a single solid object with a weight to it.

Dev: I love the alpha and early beta stages because I have folks I work with frequently for that, and often as not these turn into semi-roleplay types of brainstorming sessions where we get very “yes and” about the plot and characters and just follow the thoughts where they lead.

Anonymous #2: My favourite part of writing is when my characters surprise me. Sometimes I’ll be midway through writing a scene and in the flow and write a bit I didn’t plan on, which will often end up being my favourite.

3. What advice would you give to someone who fell out of writing and wants to regain that feeling?

jumblejen: Most importantly, understand that while life is short, it’s also very long. It will come around again, you just have to be patient and gentle with yourself, and be sure you’re refilling your artistic “well.” Try to let go of the constraints and musts and have-tos around your writing. Pick something silly or absurd and just write a thing that doesn’t matter at all. I’ve found that can lead you back into that magical place where the words are flowing and your mind is so alive.

Rascal Hartley: Probably start small. Write little scenes you like. Don’t worry about context; it doesn’t matter. Just write only the bits and pieces you like, even if they’re just single sentences. And then you’ve written, and you’re at least one sentence closer than you were before, but most importantly: you had fun. That is, like, what it’s all about. Just have fun.

Anonymous #1: Okay so, first of all—this was me for the better part of a decade. I spent my entire youth, from before I could read into the early years of teenagedom writing. I spent hours on it, I wrote barely literate novels and works I’m sure I would still be proud of if I had them, and some time in high school I just lost my ability to word. It can be so, so difficult to start when you feel burnt out and the idea of writing is exhausting, or just following through with ideas you start and can’t seem to finish, and honestly, what got me back in was just… not caring? I had an epiphany, specifically writing a short joke fic, where I was spending all this time leading up to and explaining why the fic was happening, getting hung up on exposition (which is beautiful and I love writing btw), and it ended up dragging me to a point where I felt like I’d never finish (again). It sucks feeling like that, and I vented to a friend, and he said: just don’t fuss with it. Just write the joke. So… I did! I’ve always been a fan of a cold open, but sometimes I struggle to let myself write one. Drop your reader, your character, and yourself right where you want to be, and everything else will follow.

boneturtle: I’m in this place now. Although I am still producing words, it’s only when I have a contract and a deadline. I haven’t written any stories just for the joy of it in years. I have so many things I want to tell people, but I’m so worried about getting the words wrong. It’s paralyzing.

Lucy K.R.: Writing is a muscle, and like any muscle it can be overworked and strained. The ONLY cure for that strain is rest and stretching. That stretching can be focusing on reading for a while to remember why you wanted to write, engaging in small exercises to re-awaken your skills, or it can be stepping away from the written word all together and gaining a few new experiences about which to tell stories! However you approach it, consider it an injury—you have to let yourself heal, and come back to it slow in order to re-build your strength.

Puck: Do some really low-stakes writing. Visual artists practice by doodling, doing hand exercises like drawing circles, etc. So for writing, to get the muscles moving again, you can try writing to prompts, or do a short verbal sketch of a setting or a character. Try writing a vignette rather than something with a plot. Or, alternately, try plotting out a narrative without getting stuck on the prose.

Sage Mooreland: Let yourself cry and scream and be frustrated… but don’t blame yourself. I’m not saying don’t accept responsibility for whatever may actually be your actions that pulled you away from writing; that’s important to acknowledge and work on. What I’m saying is don’t carry the guilt or shame of falling away. You had reasons and that guilt is misplaced. Don’t bully yourself about it or into it, either. Be gentle. When I teach writing, I tell people to set up a note pad or digital document or something, set a timer, and write about literally anything. Even if the words are, “this sucks, this is hard, this sucks, this is hard,” or even just “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck” over and over, you’re writing. When that timer is done, so are you. and you never have to look at it or touch it again. If you find that you wrote something you want to pursue, AWESOME! CHASE IT AND HAVE FUN WITH IT! But let yourself be bad. let yourself write and toss. Give yourself grace to be slow and struggle. The goal is to set yourself a routine of words. Not a habit. a routine.

S. J. Ralston: Make garbage and delight in making garbage. Give zero shits whether it’s good or not. Be self-indulgent, be ham-fisted, be nonsensical, be purple, be dumb. Treat writing the way you’d treat a walk in the park; it’s not about whether you’re good at it, it’s about whether you’re enjoying it!

Dev: For me, it helps to start small. A drabble, or a challenge that gives directions so that the onus isn’t entirely on me.

Anonymous #2: Read/watch/think about something that irritates you and then write how it should have gone if it was actually satisfying. Get really self indulgent. If you’re writing to please yourself you’ll never run out of steam and you might find that you’re telling a story that’s a lot more unique than if you’re writing people pleasers.

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