Writing Motivation is like the Holy Grail for Writers. We all forgot where the first guy put it. So, we have to spend the rest of our lives creating counterfeit copies. If you’ve already seen my other articles on the topic, you know my system for motivation. But there are some more that I felt I could add. How can you increase your writing motivation then?
You can increase writing motivation by redirecting your goals to more simple goals.
This is a simple thing to say, but for many others, it is not something they consider, because for them, writing is more of a punishment then anything else.
- Writing Motivation- Why Am I Not Motivated To Write?
- How Do You Build Motivation To Write?
Writing Motivation- Why Am I Not Motivated To Write?
You are not motivated to write because you are taking on far more than is natural for a writer on your first try.
There are a number of times you will lose motivation to write. For this case, we will concentrate on the situation where you have started writing, but now, you can’t get yourself to get back to finishing the book.
The reason that this is happens is that you are taking on a lot more than is necessary. When we get an inspiration for a book, we hurriedly start writing the book down. A day passes down, and we do an insane amount of progress. Maybe writing Stephen King’s famous 6 pages. Then you suppose this is easier than you imagine. In fact, you can probably finish about 60 pages of your book in just 10 days, you think to yourself. The following day, you wake up, and decide to make coffee first, look at a Twitter post first, check out a meme first, and finally, you find you have not written anything for your writing session.
You were successful on the first time because you went to write with one goal in mind “sit down, and write what I feel like writing”. Then you allowed the flow to take over. The second day, your goal was to “sit down, and write 6 pages.” This is bad advice.
So why do people keep doing it? There is this poisonous idea that people have called no pain no gain. They believe that they should feel the difficulty of the fight, and they should “conquer” themselves. This “hardness” of writing makes them feel like they are doing hard work.
The No Pain No Gain Mindset effects on Writing Motivation
Point #1- Pain Improves Happiness
Now, this has some weight to it to an extent. A study conducted in San Francisco University found that ‘No Pain No Gain’ applied when it came to learning mastering a new skill. Putting up with the pain and stress of the moment, led to a long term happiness. The summarized saying, “People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term.”
Point #2- Physical Pain Decreases Productivity
However, there is another study I found called ‘The dangers of the no pain no gain mentality in modern exercises‘. The study found that most people have a mentality of no pain no gain, which leads to them working harder in spite of their injury. This then leads to them worsening their own injuries.
Now to be fair, this study was focused on physical pain. So what about baring emotional pain? Does that help improve productivity?
Point #3- Emotional Yelling Decreases Productivity
The University of Pittsburgh led a study trying to see the effects of yelling on adolescents. “Yelling Doesn’t Help, May Harm Adolescents, Pitt-Led Study Finds” is the title of the study, so I’m not sure who would like me to go on. The study is found here if you wish to do further reading.
Point #4- Stress Decreases Productivity
Finally, a study was conducted to observe the burden of pain on employees working for the Fortune 500 companies. The found that pain led to 45% drop in overall physical health, and 23% mental health, there was a fivefold increase in health-induced limitations in work performance, and finally, nearly three and two thirds workdays lost to presenteeism and absenteeism over a 4-week period. The concluded, “The prevalence of pain and it’s impact on those with the condition combine to make it an area of much opportunity for improving workforce health and productivity.” To read the full study, click here.
The point is, suffering should be bared. However, suffering does not induce productivity. It may cause satisfaction, but not r not productivity.
The tricks I am about to teach you may be less satisfying, but they sure as hell will lead to productivity.
How do you build motivation to write?
1. Punishing Good Behavior Hurts Writing Motivation
The first mental shift is to stop wanting to punish yourself for failing to live up to your ambitions.
Sometimes, a person can have a goal. Maybe write a chapter. The following day, they wake up, and for one reasons or another, they do not write the chapter. So as a punishment, they decide that they will write the 2 chapters the following day.
Do not do this.
You wanting to write 1 chapter is a good thing. As a result, you must not punish yourself when you fail to live up to this. When you miss the goal you placed, you did not do anything. When you set the goal, you did something. Do not punish the setting of goals.
When you fail to do something good, there is a number of things that you can do to make up for it, which will be discussed in this article. However, the one thing that you must make sure that you do is not punish that good behavior.
2. Rewarding The Behavior You Want Helps Writing Motivation
The second mindset shift is that you must begin to reward good behavior, in spite of its results.
The next thing that you should do is to reward the things that are positive. If you have managed to make a plan, such as deciding that you will write a page of your story, then you should reward this foresight.
Go out for a walk afterwards. Eat your favorite ice cream. Sleep for an extra hour. Whatever it is. The point is that you want to make all these seemingly “small” and “insignificant” behaviors look like big behaviors. You do this by rewarding them. In fact, the main point is to switch your attention from those “big goals” (finishing a book, finishing a chapter, or finishing a scene) to the “small goals” (write a page, write the first sentence, write the pre-drafting, open word, sit on the chair for 1 hour, sit on the writing space).
Test to see if you’ve mastered this stage: Can you wake up and sit on the writing space, open the word document, and write the first sentence, then sit there for 1 hour? Afterwards, does this seem satisfying to you? Then you have mastered this stage.
3. Treat Yourself Like Loved Person
The third mindset shift is that you will have to start practicing deliberate abstraction from your body.
Pay attention to the way you talk to yourself. Would you talk to yourself to someone whom you loved like that? If you had a child, would you give them the tasks you give yourself? This is a mindset shift that saved me.
You see, sometimes I’d give myself a great many thing to do. Then, I’d hate myself when I fail to get them done. I thought that treating myself like a child would lead to a decrease in expectation, and productivity. For example, you do not expect a 6 year old to finish a book. But when I tried it, something else happened.
I finished all my work.
The thing is, parents send their kids to their first day of school everyday. Each time, they always feel like their child is not ready. So, they prepare. They get them the clothes, the books, they speak to the teachers in advance, the may even try to make friends for the kid. By the time the child gets to the school, the child is prepared.
This is what it means to treat and love yourself like a child.
I started to treat myself like a loved child. rather than attacking myself for my obvious failings, I started to ask why the failings were. If a family member is a drug addict, you know that the reason or it is usually some childhood trauma. They could only be helped by addressing that issue. So I asked why was I not writing? When I got the answers, procrastination, I prepared for myself like a parent preparing for a child for their first day of school. I placed distractions away, quit a lot of negative things, decide what I would be writing, how I would write it, what time I would write it, where in the house I’d write it from, and even decided what I’d be listening to as I wrote.
So, give yourself a loved family member treatment. This behavior builds an environment for writing motivation.
4. Give Yourself A Victory
The fourth mindset shift is give yourself a ton of victories.
This simply means count your successes. By now, you should. know that to some extent you need to lower the goals. Do not work to try and write 9 pages per day. instead, make your goals something like “sit down on the writing space for 6 hours this week.” This means you will sit for an hour a day throughout the week, and have at least 1 day where you will not have to work.
But above that, you have to make it satisfying.
This can be done through building a streak. Try to go for as many days as possible. Keep some sort of chart to show the streak. There is nothing more satisfying then looking at your chart and seeing multiple days shaded in green. This behavior will maintain writing motivation.
5. Combine Pleasure With Work
The fifth mindset shift will be mixing your pleasure with work.
The truth is this is what inspired me to write this article. I’d just finished a day of work and had managed to get so much done. I’d written an article, started and finished a chapter of my book, and I’d managed to finish a college assignment. When I told my friend, he told me that it was weird that I was not tired. That’s when it hit me.
Most people expect work to be tedious and painful.
If you are feeling good, and are in high spirits, they think maybe its the opposite. The thing is though, I mix my work with a lot of the things I enjoy. I have a small speaker, like this, which I place on the table which plays music from the 70s, 80s and 90s. On my head I wear earphones, and listen to ASMR. Then, I will have a bottle full of drinking water, and one full of drinks. I have a heater on, with blankets on me sometimes (my favorite fleece blanket that I’ve had since I was 16. Yes, I’m a grown man with a favorite blanket, judge me you monster).
You have no idea how comfy and fun writing is for me!
I do not want to be anywhere else but in my room, writing. This is what I do for fun most of the time, only stopping when my friends drag me to the club and my skull hurts too much to write for the following day.
The point is, you do not have to be a natural born introvert to be a successful writer. You can create your own fun in your home, while you write. You could use my template. Here’s my speaker, my headphones, and my water bottles. They are the ones that you see on the picture there, which is taken on my dirty room floor (my bad). BUT ADD MORE! Get sweets if you like those. Get puzzles, or some sort of rubic cube. As long as it is something that takes only a little attention, you can add it in.
Then, you will see your writing motivation skyrocket, I swear.
6. Mark Your Journey
The sixth step is to mark your journey.
This one is a more “conventional” writing motivation trick. But it works. Brandon Sanderson writes about how he always keeps track in percentage about how much progress he has made in the book. This motivates him.
You can do the same.
Using your outline, look how far you’ve come, and you will see how motivated you get to write some more.
7. Keep A Daily Logue
The seventh mindset shift is to start keeping a daily Logue of your progress.
This is something that I also do. Most nights, I write on my word document how productive my day was, or how unproductive it was and why it was like that. Maybe I overslept, maybe I was sick. Maybe, I was just too lazy. It does not matter, I write it down. Then, I make a plan for what I could do to change it. Not a formal plan, but something like, ‘I should find a way to wake up earlier’.
This helps because if a number of days go by and you see your Logue look he same with their problems, you feel a need to change. This then increase your writing motivation.
8. Focus On The Finger, Not The Moon
The eight mindset shift is to focus on the simplest of feelings, and actions, not on the massive actions and feelings.
Bruce Lee speaks of a finger pointing to the moon. He says you should not focus on the finger, but on the moon, because that’s the whole point of… well, pointing. But, I am here to perform heresy, if you’ll please. I say, focus on the finger, just this one time. What does this mean?
When you have a goal to write, writing is the moon. Especially the finished product. Things like chapters, or books are the moon. The finger is something like sitting down on the chair, opening the word document. I suggest that you spend your whole time focusing on these things entirely
9. Identify Your Barriers
The ninth mindset shift is to try and remove all the barriers standing on your way.
Remember the whole, loving yourself like a child thing? Now it is time to be specific about what preparations need to be made. Why do you not write? There are 5 reasons why people do not write. 1 They do not have a plan. 2 They do not have a way of dealing with procrastination. 3 They do not have a way of dealing with distractions. 4 They do not have any clear directions what they should do to perfectly execute their plans. Finally, 5, they do not have any motivation, which we are fixing here.
Look at these 5 and guess which is the most common reason why you never write? What is your most common barrier? When you have figured that out, you can finally begin.
10. Clear Your Path
The tenth step is to remove all the barriers in your way.
When you have recognized why you never get stuff done, it is time to work on a plan to fix whichever barrier is on your way. There are articles here that can help you with that if you wish.
These are my best ideas, but tell me your own that you thought of. If it’s good, I will put it up on the next article on this topic. I will have to test on me first though. When we have finally mastered pumping out writing motivation on demand, we will be on our way to mastering mastery!