How to Recapture Motivation for Your Writing Project

You’ve been working on your latest writing project for a while now, and your motivation is waning.

You still believe in it. You still want to take it all the way through to “the end,” but lately the fire has dimmed in your heart.

What’s happened, and how can you get that fire back?

Your Writing Project: What Happens on the Road to “The End?”

Working on any creative project takes time, energy, and focus, but there are few projects as demanding as a book-length manuscript.

There’s a reason why so many of them are abandoned somewhere along the way. Many reasons, actually.

One of the big ones is the dreaded “middle” of the book, where things inevitably get more difficult. All the flaws in the manuscript can create a giant barricade here, presenting a huge challenge to figure out how to open the creative gates again.

Sometimes life just interferes, robbing you of you writing time, so that when you finally get back to the story you’ve lost your train of thought and aren’t sure how to proceed. Self-doubt can raise its ugly head and cause you to doubt yourself.

You may compare herself to another writer, and decide that your story doesn’t measure up. Sometimes motivation wanes as a simple result of long-term focus and effort, resulting in fatigue.

You Can Drift Away from Your Writing Project

Whatever the reason for the change, it’s usually disturbing.

You may take a break from writing as you try to figure it out, and part of you will enjoy that break, but another part of you will be bothered by it.

I should be writing. What’s wrong with me? I’m never going to get this project done. It’s like a song in your ear that won’t go away.

You know you could get past it if you could just get back to work, but it’s like you have a barrier in front of you and you can’t get over it.

Fortunately, there are ways to get your motivation back, and to recapture that excitement you had for your writing project in the first place.

5 Ways to Rekindle Your Motivation for Your Writing Project

The first thing you need to do is to find out why your motivation has dwindled, and that’s not always easy.

Try a nice long walk or drive, some time with your journal, or talk it out with a good writing friend. Find out what’s up.

Are you blocked because something isn’t right in the story? Are you just tired because you’ve been pushing it too hard? Did something happen that caused you to doubt yourself? Or have you just lost the spark you had at the start of the project?

Finding out why can help open the door to a solution. Depending on what you discover, one or more of the following ideas may help you to get back to happily writing again.

1. Give yourself permission to slow down.

It’s very easy as a writer to succumb to the pressure to constantly do more. We hear that the most successful writers are those who can write quickly, publish often, and market left and right.

But without some help from an assistant or otherwise, this sort of schedule can quickly lead to burnout. Suddenly writing seems more like a chore than a pleasure.

To recapture your love of writing, allow yourself to slow down. Cut back on some of the activities you’re doing, or push back a few of your self-imposed deadlines. Give yourself the time you need to really develop your current project. Without the clock ticking over your head, you’re more likely to enjoy yourself, and your motivation will naturally return.

Writing Project Tip 2. Put a priority on finishing the project.

Writers are creative people, and that means we put a high priority on inspiration.

Unfortunately, we can lose sight of the pure hard work that a book-length manuscript can take. And hard work isn’t always fun or inspiring.

If your motivation has waned because your project is turning into more work than you expected, keep this in mind: The only way you’ll learn to become a better writer is to finish the project.

In my early years of writing, when a story wasn’t working, I figured it was because the idea or the basic premise wasn’t good, so I’d abandon it and try again.

Only later did I learn that any idea can be successfully implemented if you have the skill and the experience, and the only way you’re going to gain those is through the practice of finishing what you start.

Resist the temptation to abandon the project, at least not until you’ve examined every possible way you could finish it. Even if it’s not what you hoped it would be by the time you type “the end,” you’ll still be much better off if you finish than if you stop prematurely.

You’ll gain the experience you need to do better on your next project.

3. Re-evaluate how important all the “other stuff” is to you.

Sometimes you may lose your motivation on a project because you’re thinking too much about everything else, like publishing, marketing, and your author platform. You could be living too much in the future and not enough in the now, which diverts your attention from the essence of the story.

Putting pressure on a young manuscript—which happens when you think about publishing it or marketing it—is a surefire way to kill your enthusiasm for it. Writers must keep the craft of writing separate from all the other aspects of the business.

If you’ve been worried lately about whether or not your book will be published, whether it will sell, or whether readers will like it, decide today to put those worries aside. They don’t belong in your mind while you’re working on your story.

One of the best ways to do this is to remember the joy you’ve found in the act of writing, not in any of the outside rewards you may have received from it. Remind yourself of those writing sessions when you lost track of time, or when you emerged feeling energized and inspired. Recapture a writing routine that allows you to just enjoy the process again, and your motivation will likely return.

Writing Project Tip 4. Try a different project.

I’m not saying to abandon your original project, but sometimes starting something new can jumpstart your batteries.

This happened to me about a year ago. I was struggling on my work in progress (WIP), so while I was on vacation, I let my imagination go on a new project I had been thinking about for awhile.

By the time I got home, I was brimming with excitement and ready to get to work.

I spent a couple months writing like crazy on that new project, but the old one was still in my mind. Then one day, I got a new idea for how to approach the old one. I ran to my notebook and started taking down notes, and within a few minutes had blocked out an entirely different way to tell the story that I was excited about.

Within a few weeks, I started work on my old project again, and found that the new approach was working. Meanwhile, I continued writing on the new project, too. The process of working on something new helped free up my creative brain, and eventually it solved my problem. I was newly inspired and motivated to return to the old project and finish it.

This could work for you, too. Just be warned—it could also cause you to abandon the old project. Sometimes, that’s all you can do, but as I mentioned above, it’s always best to finish it if you can. The most important thing is not to establish a pattern of abandoning projects. Keep the door open to your old one even as you allow the new one to get you going again.

5. Tackle self-doubt.

Self-doubt is one of the main motivation destroyers for writers. Even if you don’t think it’s causing your situation, I would suggest you consider that it could be working behind the scenes to sabotage your progress. (Read: 7 Signs You’re a Writer in the Grips of Hidden Self-Doubt.)

Particularly if you’re starting to get to a point where your story is getting difficult, it’s very common for self-doubt to raise its ugly head. Down deep, you may doubt your ability to overcome the difficulties. You may have never faced such issues in a story before, which can make you think that you won’t be able to come up with the right solutions.

Self-doubt can show up for other reasons, too. Maybe you saw that another writer was enjoying yet another success, and it triggered feelings of inadequacy in you. Or maybe the struggle to make everything come together right in your novel has frustrated you to the point that you are wondering if you should be a writer at all.

Here’s something you can do to beat back self-doubt and get writing again: take action. Any action will do. Go back and re-read what you have so far. Study books on writing craft and see if you can pinpoint the issue that’s stopped you. Journal about your feelings, and see what comes up. Talk to a good writing friend about it. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Writers Write—It’s Time to Get Back To It

There are some other things you can try. Attend a writer’s conference, submit your partial manuscript to a novel-in-progress contest that offers feedback, hire a book doctor or editor, or go through your manuscript and mark the parts you really like. If exhaustion is behind your low motivation, take a few days off, spend some time in nature, and redo your schedule to include more self-care.

Writers write. If you’re not writing, something’s up, and unfortunately, only you can fix it. You owe it to yourself to take the time and effort you need to spark that inspiration again.

How do you recapture your motivation for a writing project?