What Keeps You Writing?

What keeps you writing?

Some days if just happens. Flow. You know what I mean. When you put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) and the words just pour out of you. It’s as though your characters are sitting beside you, telling you exactly what they see, and how they feel, and you just know that what you’re writing is good, if not gold.

But other days…

Oh, the other days are something else entirely. Like pulling teeth, or watching paint dry, those days can seem excruciatingly long, and unproductive, and you just know that most of what you write is fool’s gold at best; fat, padding words to be deleted soon (at worst).

What do you do in those moments?

I’ve been having a NaNoWriMo-type few weeks. A recent 3-book contract for a US publishing house (yay! Still excited!) means writing to deadline, for the first time in my life. Book 1 is done, but books 2 and 3 needs a great deal of work – even before being sent back for revisions. So my days when I don’t work at high school mean working even harder to get words on page. Good words. Or at least, good enough words.

Previous NaNo experiences have taught me that it is possible, and with God I do believe all things are possible. But still the slog remains.

So what keeps me writing? Apart from the advance (!) and my contractual obligations?

Prayer works. Asking God for wisdom and direction gets a guaranteed response (check out James 1.5). 

Some days I need chocolate. A Twix bar is good; it can be broken into several smaller portions, so when I hit the next thousand then its choc reward time. 
Tea is also good, especially my new favourite camomile, honey and vanilla. Too much caffeine used to not be enough, except I’m not completely convinced of its health benefits beyond doing lots of stuff faster (faster, yet sadly, more poorly). 

Sometimes I’ll make morning tea or lunch my goal: get to this amount then eat. Hunger seems to be a good motivator in my life :/
Other times, I need to get away for a few minutes, go for a walk, or revisit an inspiring scene or episode from a fave book or film (but beware the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice which sucks me in for hours...)

But sometimes there is something to be said for pushing through, for keeping going, keeping pen in hand / fingers on keys and backside in chair, even if I know I’ll cringe later. Because it can be that in the pushing through we stumble across the gold.

And that makes everything worthwhile.

How about you? What keeps you writing? Do you have any tricks to share on what keeps you staying on task, especially when you don’t feel motivated?

Carolyn Miller lives in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, with her husband and four children. A longtime lover of romance, especially that of the Regency era, Carolyn holds a BA in English Literature, and loves drawing readers into fictional worlds that show the truth of God’s grace in our lives. Her Regency novel 'The Elusive Miss Ellison' will be published in the US by Kregel in February 2017. She is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

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