From Edie: Struggling with writer burnout or lost motivation? DiAnn Mills shares practical ways to rekindle creativity, refresh your writing perspective, and fall in love with writing again.
How Writers Can Rekindle Creativity and Fall in Love with Writing Again
by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills
Successful writers must maintain a fresh writing perspective, or their writing will fall flat. No getting around it. How do we climb back onboard the optimism train when we no longer have enthusiasm about our books, blogs, articles, poems, screenplays, or other forms of content?
It’s easy to become disillusioned when—
- We’re on a nightmare deadline.
- We’ve haven’t been paid.
- We’re under a contract obligation to complete the manuscript.
- It’s detrimental to our career to back out of a project.
- The project has been rejected, and a rewrite is essential.
- We’re a perfectionist.
- We’re jealous of other’s success and can’t seem to eliminate the negativity from our thoughts.
- Life around us is out of control—family, friends, a day job, faith, health, and circumstances that take up our time.
How can we take the necessary steps to once again rekindle a fresh perspective?
Here are 7 steps to help you climb onboard and stay there!
1. Seek guidance from other writers in a quest to find excitement for our writing again.
2. List our positive writer qualities. Place them in a prominent place where we can review them daily.
3. Be determined to find the enthusiasm that once excited us about our writing. Accept the fire has died and choose to light a match to our inspiration.
- Discover the original enthusiasm about the project
- Find three things that we like about it.
- Explore what we don’t like about it.
4. Analyze what happened to cause our discouragement.
- The idea needs more plot, information, editing, research, or resources.
- We learned about a similar writing project and changing ours is depressing.
- We are on a deadline and finishing the project is overwhelming.
- The project needs a total rewrite.
5. Determine to make changes.
- Schedule time every day to work on the project.
- Seek out help if needed.
6. Take a break from the project. Walk away. Do something other than thinking negatively.
- Sometimes we become trapped in our own prison where self-doubts keep us chained.
- Many times a physical activity (sweat) breaks through our inability to create.
7. Mentor a serious writer. When we put aside our own problems and concentrate on helping another, we are blessed.
Remember when you first fell in love with a writing project? Every thought about the manuscript filled you with joy. The same is true about our writing.
How do you rekindle a fresh perspective for your writing?
TWEETABLE
Her novels have appeared on the CBA, ECPA, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists and have earned numerous honors, including the Christy, Selah, Golden Scroll, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol Awards.
DiAnn is a founding board member of American Christian Fiction Writers and serves as Conference Advisor for the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. She is also active in Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild, Outliers Writing University, and The Christian Pen. Passionate about helping others succeed, she invests in writers through mentoring, book coaching, editing, and dynamic workshops she teaches across the country.
A self-proclaimed coffee snob who roasts her own beans, DiAnn enjoys diving into good books, experimenting in the kitchen, and unabashedly spoiling her grandchildren—whom she insists are the smartest kids in the universe. She makes her home under the sunny skies of Houston, Texas.
Connect with DiAnn for behind-the-scenes glimpses, writing tips, and lively conversations at diannmills.com, or on Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads, BookBub, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
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