5 Ways To Stay Motivated in Your Writing Career by Molly King

As humans, we all struggle at times to stay excited about certain tasks at hand. We get bored; we get frustrated; we get distracted (ooh, cat gifs!) and our art suffers for it — we stop writing our novel, we stop writing our next song.

Sometimes you just have to stop and remember why you are doing it in the first place.

But seriously… we recently dug up an old article on Lifehack that reminded us of some simple ways to stay motivated. The article is mostly focused on general life motivation, but it can easily be applied to your creative career as well.

You can read the article in its’ entirety here, or check out our summary below.

How to keep your writing life fresh and active

1) Remember the reason(s) you’re doing it in the first place: A feeling of accomplishment?  Personal gain? Cold hard cash? One little step closer to your bigger goal?

2) Have fun: Ask yourself, “what can I do to make whatever it is I am doing more enjoyable for myself (and maybe others)?”

3) Take a different direction: there is likely more than one way to do whatever you are doing, so try approaching your task from a different angle. Ask yourself how other people do this same thing. Try it that way.

4) Baby steps: In order to not become overwhelmed by the larger task at hand, split tasks into smaller goals and celebrate each goal once you reach it. For example, if your goal is to write an entire novel, set a goal of writing one chapter at a time, or just writing for one hour at a time, and celebrate when you’ve done it. You’ll be stoked that you reached your goal and be motivated to move onto chapter two (or hour two).

5) Reward yourself: once you’ve reached a goal, make sure you take time to reward yourself. Whether it’s something as simple as taking a break or buying yourself a lil’ sumpthin’ sumpthin’, it’s important to recognize progress to stay motivated.

So, there are 5 ways to stay motivated. Does one resonate with you more than the other? Do you think you’ll mix and match a few to keep inspired? Or maybe you have another idea for staying motivated – let us know in the comments below.

["Possible" image from Shutterstock.]