Consistent Creativity

[OddLove]

I'm currently experiencing that burst of inspiration where writing feels effortless. But that wave of creativity comes and goes, sometimes it's gone for weeks or even months at a time, and sometimes it's a rapid cycle where I'm writing a few paragraphs or a chapter every few days as a story slowly comes together.

But I do wish I could be disciplined with it and stick to some sort of schedule because I'll randomly get 'When's the next chapter?' comments which makes me feel like I'm leaving people hanging. The problem is, whenever I try to force myself to write when I'm not feeling inspired, I write complete trash. It's lifeless, boring, generic, etc, and I'm not comfortable publishing something I don't personally like.

There's tons of video essays and 'top ten writing tips!' on YouTube, and millions of detailed articles about the creative process, structuring stories, developing characters, writing dialog, etc. But I haven't found much advice for how to increase the frequency or length of creativity. It seems that some people have a bottomless chalice of inspiration, and others have a limited amount and when that chalice is empty, they gotta either wait for it to replenish or maybe find ways to refill it.

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

I also experience cycles just as you described, and it can feel very frustrating when you want to write but the inspiration just isn't there.

A long time ago when I was writing much longer works and needed to be consistent, I had two rules which worked for me.

Firstly, I always had a robust plan for the story, so all I needed to do when writing was 'paint in between the lines', as it were. This meant I was never sitting there with no idea what to write.

Secondly, if I wasn't feeling inspired on a particular day, I just set myself a word count target (say, 1000 words) and once I'd reached it, I put the writing away and did something else. This kept me from feeling burnt out and like it was a never ending task.

These days, as there's no pressure to keep writing, I allow myself to do other things when the writing inspiration is gone and wait for it to come back round. Trying to force it never gives good results.

Finally, don't listen too closely to 'when's next chapter coming out' comments. Everyone would (or should, at least) prefer good writing which takes time to rushed writing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

One thing I learned in my first two years here is that you make a rod for your own back if you publish as you go. Long endless chapters signal a death knell to the story eventually, where it just peters out; you get bored, readers don't care, and the story runs out of ideas. You've got to know when to wrap it up.

The alternative is to release not much while you write "the big story", but then you suffer lack of continued exposure, so that's the alternative downside.

My solution was to write far more self-contained stories, often with the same leading characters, but learning to stop writing when the idea was well done but not overcooked. That way, I've got more and varied stories, and a bigger collection of tried and true (but still reliable) characters.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

I find that setting some goals (other than trying to write a good story) or setting a personal challenge for oneself can help. Goals could be writing X stories in a year, writing a story in all categories, entering all the themed contests, etc. Setting goals doesn't exactly increase creativity, but they create a deadline of sorts to force creativity, sink or swim.

If sustaining creativity is the issue, then I agree with EB about avoiding writing as you go when it comes to a series.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I'm not an experienced enough writer myself to have my own process. When I read your post though, I remembered hearing some author or other in an interview once describe their method. It went something like this:

Whenever you have a day with no inspiration, or where you just can't be bothered. Write anyway. Don't continue work on anything important, just fill at least one blank page with something, anything.

A lot of the time, the stuff you wrote will be trash, but it may get you going enough to now find motivation to continue or start something else. Even if it doesn't, it will slowly get you used to writing every day, and you should have fewer days without any creativity at all. Sometimes the trash you write may even not be, or will have ideas that can be reworked into something worthwhile.

Now will this help you? I have no idea. I don't know if it would help me either. But it sounds like something that would be worth trying to me.

 

[TheRedLantern]

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

Yes, I have a process to stay motivated and inspired. It's to make writing a ritual, and to track my words while drafting.

I put on my super nerdy reading glasses (literally look like this right now ), make a cup of something warm, and sometimes I have to tell myself "just write one sentence, one halfway decent sentence, and I will consider today's goal to have been met and you can go watch The Meg for the 14th time if that's what you want to do." I'm trying to repeatedly give my brain a series of experiences that end in a period of creativity, in hopes of tricking it to enter a creative state by going through the ritual.

The second is that I track my word count for the day. This encourage me to say "just write one more paragraph, think about what that will do to your word count." It also encourages me to do whatever I can to avoid putting a big fat ugly zero into my log for the day.

My writing system is one I designed for my brain. I know what kinds of things get it into the zone, and my system is really just exposing myself to as many of those things as I can and hoping one sticks.

Sometimes none do. I put in a zero for the day, accept the loss, and resolve to do better tomorrow.

 

[Erozetta]

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

My process:

"A mental breakdown is going to set everything back by at least six months. Write something devastating instead and maybe in another six months there will be time for a breakdown."

Now it's been many years and I have yet to permit myself to have a breakdown but have hundreds of stories on my hard drive, so, I mean... Yay?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The problem is, whenever I try to force myself to write when I'm not feeling inspired, I write complete trash. It's lifeless, boring, generic, etc, and I'm not comfortable publishing something I don't personally like.

Different people are just different. Some people write and write well by just forcing themselves to sit and write. Often these writers will throw away tons of it and just keep the good stuff and it really works for them. Personally, I'm like you. When I'm forcing it, it just sucks. I need to be inspired and get into a groove. I need to feel the feelings that I am trying to convey and if I can't get 'there' it just sucks and is a waste of time. I still try to force myself once in a blue moon, even though I get 500 words of total crap. I think that it's good to do that, just not often. It keeps my perspective clear and keeps me from getting complacent (lazy) in my ways. And sometimes I will get a very good idea out of it, just horribly executed and devoid of life. I can dust it off and re-write it, or get out a crane and a backhoe and edit the living fuck out of it.

Write the way that is the most inspiring and gets the best results for you, so long as you don;t get complacent/lazy in your ways.

because I'll randomly get 'When's the next chapter?' comments which makes me feel like I'm leaving people hanging.

That's because you are leaving people hanging. This is a separate issue. This is all about patience. You solve this 100% by finishing the entire story before publishing any of it. There are multiple benefits.

1 ~ You can publish on a regular schedule and not disappoint your readers. There are several writers here who rant about 'courtesy' of readers to be nice and respond under their own name and that they owe them for the work put into writing (the least they could do, blahblah). Yet very few ever speak of the courtesy of a writer to not leave their readers hanging. I think myself and BobbyBrant and maybe 1 other ever say this.
2 ~ You can promise an ending to the story and mark the series complete. This will attract more readers.
3 ~ You will have an easier time making the story good. If you publish as you go, you are writing in stone. If you wait, you can edit, you can back-edit. You can vertically integrate new ideas. you can tighten up your plot, tie together or trim off loose ends, etc. You give yourself the opportunity to really make the story as good as it can be.

If you publish as you go there is only one benefit - the instant gratification of scores, comments and applause. I repeat: this is all about patience. The only reason that you publish before you are finished is because you can't wait to please the audience (or have the audience please you) so you you;d rather post something inferior and incomplete which ironically pleases the audience less - and puts you in this guilt conundrum.

Then we have the post-as-you-go writers who always say "but I need the feedback of the previous chapter to inspire the next one." Well then these people are admitting that they are writing an uninspired story. Why would you be upset that you are forcing yourself to write something uninspired? What else would you expect? I'm not trying to shame anyone or call anyone stupid. It's a human trap that we can all fall into. Personally I don't fall into it any more because I'm too wise to it, so I'm sharing that wisdom with you and everyone else.

You are a writer. You write from inspiration. Get into your inspired place and write it all down - all of it. Finish the whole story before you publish any of it, and aaaallllll of these problems simply go away. ; )

 

[IWroteThis]

I only post what I consider completed stories, although I have posted a few sequels, so I can't speak to that part of your question.

I find that I have three distinct phases: writing, editing, and reading. They're not completely isolated from each other, but my main focus definitely shifts between them. Unfortunately, having a story repeatedly stuck in Pending for nearly two months has put a damper on editing phases.

But, to your question about writing when you're not inspired to write, I have a couple of approaches. Which one I use depends on whether I'm struggling with what to write or struggling to want to write.

In the first case, I push myself to just write something. I know it's going to be bad, but that's actually a good thing, as it's going to stay on my mind and bug me. Sometimes it takes a couple of days, but suddenly, usually just as I'm about to fall asleep at night, my brain will go, "DUH! THIS is what should happen instead." If I don't write out something bad to antagonize myself, those epiphanies still happen, but they tend to take longer.

In the second case, I tend to go through my WiP folder and read what I've already written. I usually find a few things to change as I go, which helps get the juices flowing. If I nothing in WiP draws me in, I move to my ideas folder and start going through all my notes in there. If I manage to get through all of that without anything inspiring me to write, I'll either work on editing one of the stories waiting in that queue or go read something.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You just have to find your own path. @pink_silk_glove is 100% correct, we are all different. I had 8 word documents open the other night with partial stories on all of them. I gave up, went for a run, took a nice hot shower and went to bed. Laying in bed the conclusion of one of them just came to me. Then that sparked something for another one. So now I have two stories in the pending que. Some people would have been better off staring at the computer, it wouldn't have helped me.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I'm currently experiencing that burst of inspiration where writing feels effortless. But that wave of creativity comes and goes, sometimes it's gone for weeks or even months at a time, and sometimes it's a rapid cycle where I'm writing a few paragraphs or a chapter every few days as a story slowly comes together.

But I do wish I could be disciplined with it and stick to some sort of schedule because I'll randomly get 'When's the next chapter?' comments which makes me feel like I'm leaving people hanging. The problem is, whenever I try to force myself to write when I'm not feeling inspired, I write complete trash. It's lifeless, boring, generic, etc, and I'm not comfortable publishing something I don't personally like.

There's tons of video essays and 'top ten writing tips!' on YouTube, and millions of detailed articles about the creative process, structuring stories, developing characters, writing dialog, etc. But I haven't found much advice for how to increase the frequency or length of creativity. It seems that some people have a bottomless chalice of inspiration, and others have a limited amount and when that chalice is empty, they gotta either wait for it to replenish or maybe find ways to refill it.

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

I subscribe to a site called Master Class and have watched hours of videos by world class authors. They all have different methodologies, but one theme seems to be consistent. They all make the time to be in their writing space. If that means creating new work or editing existing work, they make the time to be in that space.

Where that has gotten me is 89 published stories over the past 6.5 years, a WIP folder with dozens of stories begging for my love, and about a dozen Pending that I will read and reread and edit until I can't find anything else to fix. I publish about one a month from quick little short stories to a few short novels, most of which have been pretty well received.

So, make time to write, edit, or revisit your in progress stories, garden, nurture your words, just keep finding time to be in your writing space.

 

[crookedletter]

I love writing, it's important to me to do it, I feel better about my day/life when I've gotten some writing done. But if I only did it when it came easy, or when I was really fired up about a story, I wouldn't do it enough. I wouldn't push through the blocks and gain momentum, I would fall out of the habit and I think I'd end up finding myself with months gone by having not written a word.

So I force myself to write, even if I'm not feeling it. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth, sometimes nothing good comes of it. But just as often -- more often, if I'm lucky -- I can push through that initial block, get a head of steam, and by the end of any given writing session the words are coming. And then those ideas and characters are moving around in my head, so when I'm in the shower or going for a walk or whatever it is, thoughts spring to mind that get me back to the writing table.

What works for me is having a word count goal every day, and a page goal every week. I keep it high and I don't always hit it. But that works better for me than a set amount of time to "write" -- because then if I end up, say, posting to a thread on AH about my writing habits, it doesn't count, because that word count hasn't budged. I have to treat myself like a child who won't eat their vegetables: no video games until I've hit my word count.

 

[iwatchus]

I find that I get grouchy if I try to force something that doesn't want to come. I either try writing something else (a 750 is a nice side piece for me if I'm stuck hard for days). Sometimes just changing what story I'm working on is enough. Other times I will shift activities completely (moving to planning or outlining a different story or editing one that I have written part of). If all else fails, work on my always growing list of stories I want to read.

But forcing words that aren't there doesn't work for me. Fortunately, they usually are there and in copious amounts, so it's all good.

YMMV

 

[SimonDoom]

This might not work for everyone, but I think the key is not to rely on inspiration. The key is discipline. Think of your story as the result of craft, not as the result of a creative explosion.

Make yourself sit down and write. See what happens. It may be crap, in which case you can delete it and start over. But just keep writing and don't wait for lightning to strike you, or worry about how you can attract lightning strikes.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Sometimes I see that motivation means something completely different between different people struggling. To me it's more like an emotion, meaning that it's fleeting. Sometimes I'm motivated, sometimes I'm not. The only reason I consistently write is not motivation, but anxiety. I said it repeatedly: if I don't write, I get really anxious, my mind goes all over the place, and I'm prone to panic attacks, or even worse: ADHD meltdowns, which can be violent. So it is very much natural to me to write as a coping mechanism, even if it is just writing in my journal, it eases the anxiety a lot.

Now, the way I stay consistant is through challenges. There's one that I'm doing: writing about the same thing for a year, which is actually a drawing advice from artist Marc Schattner that he gave to author Campbell "Struthless" Walker when Struthy used to work for him and couldn't be as creative as him. He tells the whole story about it. I also did the attempt to write a novel 10-minutes a day. Pushed 85K, with a total time of almost 48 hours, and half of it I wrote it on my phone. I did this following the linked article from the Writer's Digest. Then there's other things too... Struthless himself actually has a video suggesting things you can do right now to spark inspiration.

And if I'm struggling with ideas, I go for a notebook where I keep my ideas and plot bunnies, or get a piece of paper, write my problem in one sentence, and put a timer for five minutes. The goal is to come up with 30 solutions to that problem in 5 minutes. I never get to 30, but I usually get a dozen writing prompts with that. Other times I just grab some of my TTRPG material, stuff like the Mythic GME, TSAT, or even ICRPG's Core Rulebook, and roll the dice. Page 89 of ICRPG's Core Rulebook does have a structure for games that is quite flexible, and works for stories too. It's pretty much the three-act structure, but divided between 9 different scenes, with each scene having a purpose. The manual encourages to make the scenes modular in case players FUBAR the order (which happens more often than not), so it works awesome if whatever outline you're making doesn't fit with the way the story is actually going. If I'm too overwhelmed to think, then I browse Story Ideas to get a spark, or go find a prompt on Reddit for the same deal.

Now, one big lesson I learned this year after going through that dyssentery on summer is that your physical health has repercussions in your mental health, thus your creativity. There was a point in which I had to stop writing because my body didn't allow me to write. In some days I was in pain, in other days I was sweating bullets, and in other days I just couldn't put one thought together, and my mood was just to the floor. I couldn't even journal; I crossed out those days on my BuJo, actually. And it's not just dyssentery. Anemia can also make you feel unable to work, and this one is tricky because it looks like you're feeling lazy, but instead you just need a steak.

Lastly, there's some research that points out that creativity is seasonal. Some people feel more creative in some seasons and less in others. I personally find myself at my most creative on spring and fall (mostly due to my birthday, which was actually somewhere around last week, and NaNoWriMo), with winter just being baseline creative (I opt to do more administrative stuff on winter, but Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday, so that gets my juices pumping), and summer being the one season I am at my worst, mostly due to the high temperatures. Some people are different than me, but anyone who loves the heat really doesn't know how it feels like to actually be naked, and want to be even more naked, but you can't rip your skin off like clothes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This might not work for everyone, but I think the key is not to rely on inspiration. The key is discipline. Think of your story as the result of craft, not as the result of a creative explosion.

Make yourself sit down and write. See what happens. It may be crap, in which case you can delete it and start over. But just keep writing and don't wait for lightning to strike you, or worry about how you can attract lightning strikes.

I think that this is important. That is why I will force myself on occasion. It's like the student who excels at math but struggles with history. So she really pushes herself in math because of all the success and fun, but her GPA suffers because what she really needs to study/practice is history and that's the hard boring part that she avoids. If she really wants her grades to go up, she should get her easy A in math and work her history grades up. That takes discipline. like I said above, I don't force myself often but I still do it from time to time so that hopefully I don't get lazy coasting on my easy A days.

 

[Trionyx]

Years ago I started reading a chaptered story that I really enjoyed. After several chapters, it simply stopped and left the reader hanging. At that point I realized it had been years since it had been written and that there were dozens of comments complaining about this very fact. Since then I find myself not reading chaptered stories when they first come out and if they are older, I check the last comments on the last chapter to make sure that there are no complaints about an incomplete story.

Moral (or recommendation): Don’t release a chaptered story until it is totally complete.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Does anyone here have a process or method to stay motivated and inspired? Or perhaps do you not stress about it, and just simply let it come and go as it pleases?

Here's a tip I haven't seen yet in this thread: as others have said, you need to keep working, applying yourself each day.

But you don't need to be actually writing. There are other ways you can be working on your project. For example:

-- Review what you've already written, especially if you haven't looked at it in a while, so it's "cold". You'll find yourself fixing typos and other mistakes. You'll fill in gaps. You'll delete bits that no longer sound right or that don't fit anymore. In the process you'll become reacquainted with that part of the story, which will help you build a holistic perspective on it.

-- You can go back to your notes on characters or plot points. Clean them up; reorganize them to better fit the way the story is going now; add or subtract as needed.

-- Add dummy scenes-- placeholders-- where you know you need to add something but you don't feel inspired to write it right now, or you're not sure how to approach it. Write a note or two describing what needs to go in the scene, enough so that the next time you look in that part you'll see what needs to happen.

-- Do some research you've been meaning to do on your story's background.

You get the idea. There's always work to be done that isn't actually putting words into the manuscript. I find when I do this that usually I have to stop the research or note or the other task, whatever I've set myself to do, because suddenly I see a scene or a character and I have to start writing.

Voila!

 

[Trionyx]

But you don't need to be actually writing. There are other ways you can be working on your project. For example:

Go for a walk and let your thoughts about the story run free. Maybe a new twist or scene will pop up that you can later put in your story.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

 

[SimonDoom]

View attachment 2577540

And remember: third prize and you're fired.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

And remember: third prize and you're fired.

Fuck you! That's my name! You know why, mister? You drove a Hyundai to get here. I drove an $80,000 red BMW that's parked right outside. THAT'S my name!

 

[SimonDoom]

View attachment 2577540

That scene is the high point of Alec Baldwin's career. It's a great scene. And it wasn't in the play.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

That scene is the high point of Alec Baldwin's career. It's a great scene. And it wasn't in the play.

Least screen time to ever win an Oscar, if memory serves.

 

[TheLobster]

Least screen time to ever win an Oscar, if memory serves.

Completely overshadowed the whole movie, too. Pretty much no one remembers what Glengarry Glen Ross is about, but everyone recalls this scene.