Five Ways to Find Motivation to Write....

It's called internet strolling...okay, on my last stroll, I came across Always a Writer. I loved this post so much and couldn't help but ask to cross-post this here. Enjoy!

We all have times when we just don’t want to. One of the really big science fiction writer places had a list of fifty different ways he motivates himself to write. Obviously, this isn’t fifty and in all honesty, I probably should have just stolen them from him, but I’m going to go for this. These are mostly just observations about my writing style.

1. Figure out what you want to do instead, then do it AFTER you write. This works well if say, you want to play stupid games on facebook. Tell yourself you can play said stupid game after you write two pages or some other goal.

2. Imagine the scene. Sometimes merely imagine  what I am going to write encourages me to write it, both before I forget it and because I’m suddenly excited to write it.

3. Keep your eyes on the goal. Since I write in very much of a beginning to end fashion,  I have found that writing when I’m not looking forward to writing a particularly scene makes writing a real challenge.

4. Just do it. Sometimes when I get totally demotivated to write, I find out that it is a particular scene or section that I don’t want to do. Once I get over that section, everything is all right.

5. Get plenty of sleep. Okay, maybe I’m grasping at straws here, but if I don’t get enough sleep (and I don’t often enough thanks to a 7AM clinical time), I lack the energy to do much of anything, including write. Writing takes a lot of mental power and strength, so fatigue means you’ll do something else brainless and bother with it later.

6. Bonus! Figure out why you don’t want to write. This is perhaps just in case I forgot something but in all honesty, this is just as important. We all have different reasons why we lack motivation to write and my reasons might not be your reasons. So figuring out why you don’t want to write whatever might be your first step towards actually writing again.

Do you have any other writing motivation tips? Pray tell...