Feeling Stuck In The Mud With Your Writing? – Time To Fall Back Into Love With Your Craft.
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
Upcoming episode on Becoming A Writer podcast this Saturday — we are going to talk about realising that we are actually doing our best - for ourselves and our writing.
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
- Marc Chagall
Come August, and this newsletter will turn 3!
For three years, come rain or shine, I have consistently produced my weekly essays. Even when I took some time off from publishing my essays online, I never took time off from writing them offline.
So it is normal to, every now and then, become numb and zombie-like about the whole thinking-writing-editing-publishing weekly essays.
About every six months, I feel stuck in my writing progress and am bored out of my brain trying to maintain the content creation. Don't get me wrong—I love writing! It is the machine-like churning of content that crushes my writer soul. This is also the time when self-doubt creeps up on me and makes it harder for me to keep going.
Thankfully, I have been through this experience oftentimes to know that this ebb and flow is part of the writing process. I know that during this time, three things are happening to me -
One, I realise it is just a phase that I need to ride out. Many times, it's when I feel the most stuck or feel like a failure when all I am doing is gearing myself up for a big jump.
Two, I realise that I am so concentrated on the goal at hand that I have lost sight of my vision. During this time, I may have given factors outside of my control the permission to tarnish what's in my control, therefore looking for the light everywhere else instead of inside myself.
Three is when I realised I had become so busy running the hamster wheel of life and writing that I was not spending quality, loving time with my writing. This is a sign telling me that it's time to reignite my love for my writing.
Why Do Writers Feel Stuck Or Stagnant, a.k.a. Fall Out Of Love For Writing?
Your passion has turned into a chore. Initially, the experience of writing is exciting and butterfly-like. But once we fall into the rhythm of it, the excitement turns into a task that needs to be done. At first, you wrote because you loved writing. Now, you are writing because you have to write and post your work online or are facing a deadline. The daily clocking in-clocking out, and going through the motions of the task slowly sucks the joy out of your writing and turns it burdensome.
There is a lack of reaction, feedback or validation. Most of us writers want to act as if what readers think of our writing doesn't affect us. If someone acts like this, chances are they are sociopaths or narcissists. Humans are social animals. For years, we depended on each other for company and safety to avoid getting eaten by a tiger. In recent years, we depend on each other to not only survive but thrive through the services we provide each other, personal or professional. Therefore, we want to be liked. And we base that on the reaction, feedback or validation we get from others. So when you don't get these, you feel stuck and wondering if what you're doing is right. Just like when, in the first six months of 2024, I didn't get the same kind of reactions I used to get before on Medium, I did panic a little.
There are changes in external forces. The changes that are occurring on Medium are out of my control, but they did give me the feeling of being a failure. But thankfully I have Substack and Spotify analytics to inform me that there are people out there enjoying my writing. So, nothing is wrong with my writing. Now, if I had just been on Medium, I would have thought that I was stuck in my writing journey. But it turns out it's Medium that is stuck or stagnant or struggling, not me.
You are facing daily personal issues that are hindering you. Taking care of the daily errands and responsibilities very often comes between you and your writing. Lack of refreshing sleep, upset stomach, sad heart, exhausted body, surprise urgent tasks, Amazon delivery, someone needs your help, doctor's appointment, sudden car breakdown, tax filing, traffic, day job, notifications. Even the weather can affect you and, therefore, your writing.
There are some unresolved personal issues affecting your writing life. Being in a toxic relationship or situation saps a lot of your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual energy and time - things that your writing needs very much. Or going through a phase of grief or loss. The same goes for dealing with childhood pains and healing them. These emotional baggage from unresolved personal issues can interfere with the creative process, making it challenging to focus on writing.
You are overthinking. You are overthinking your writing success. You are overthinking your writing failure. You are overthinking your writing process. You are overthinking your writing expectations. You are overthinking your writing goals. You are overthinking your writing success. Therefore, making a mountain out of a molehill of this ebb phase of the writing journey.
You are burning out. I recently heard somewhere that we burn out not because we have fallen out of love with what we are doing but because of the ways external factors are forcing us to maintain a standard or image or timeline that is not aligned with how we would like to do our work. This thought hit me like one would hit their head on the doorframe. This continuous writing without breaks or self-care, and in some cases, writing what we don't like or in a way we are not enjoying, is draining our writing enthusiasm and energy, therefore making us feel burnt out, stuck and cranky.
You don't know what's next in your writing project or journey. I won't call this a writer's block. It's not that your writing is blocked; it's more about you taking a step back and seeing the whole picture to see you are where you are supposed to be and heading where you are supposed to go. But many of us think that this stopping and stepping back is a sign that our writing well has run dry.
You have outgrown your writing shell. There will come a time in your writing journey when you will feel that you could do something more, or something else, or something better. This is actually good news disguised as dissatisfaction and stagnation in your current situation. Take this as a sign to re-evaluate your position in your current writing journey and see what changes you are being directed to take by the creative gods.
You have genuinely fallen out of love for your writing. Sometimes, you'll come to a place where you can't continue the journey you are with your current writing project. Finished or unfinished, you are simply not interested in this project anymore. This may be a sad place to be in, but it is also a sign that you have evolved as a person and writer and can't relate to that specific project anymore. If that is the case, then it may be time to thank it for all the lessons it had to teach you, say goodbye and move on to the next project.
How To Reignite Your Love For Your Writing And Move Out Of Stagnation?
Step back and reflect. You and your writing need some counselling. Both of you need to figure out where you went less or wrong and what you can do to rectify it. Journaling about my writing experience regularly helps me find places or situations or triggers that led to stagnation. Also, use this time to reconnect with your Why. Falling in love with writing is easy; staying in love is where our main job begins. Your Why helps you with that. Reconnect with the initial reasons you started writing. What inspired you? What do you hope to achieve through your writing?
Spice things up. Another thing that helps to stay in love with your writing is spicing things up. Chances are you are running on autopilot and are in a boring writing routine that is not positively stimulating you and giving you a sense of excitement or satisfaction. A change in your physical surroundings could help you get out of that stuck feeling. You could try changing your writing style or genre a bit. Or taking a break from a current project and trying out a different project could help. Even an activity like paint-and-sip can light up other parts of your creative neurons and help bring the writing neurons back online.
Have Goldilocks goals. The Goldilocks concept is having just the right amount of hard work where you are pushing your comfort zone but not so much that you break. Don't put unnecessary pressure on your writing to perform a certain way, let's say, a certain word count or a certain result. For example, I can write for 2 hours per day. Sometimes, when life allows me, I'll push it to 3, even 4 hours. But that's where I stop. If I go beyond that, I start getting diminishing returns on the effort I am putting in. This, for me, means I won't be writing for the next three days because I have creatively spent myself and am running on fumes. Good enough is good enough.
Refill your creative well. We can only create art when we nourish our inner creative. Part of our creative well is nourished with our own ideas and dreams. But when you are stuck in your writing journey, it's hard to access this part of the well. The side of the creative well is the part that initially ignited our creative endeavours. This includes the books we have read, the songs and music we have heard, the movies and shows we have watched, the paintings we have seen, and the performances we have enjoyed. And also the creative activities that we might enjoy. So, when we are feeling a lack of inspiration or motivation in our creative endeavours, we must indulge in the art of others.
Take breaks. I am guilty of not doing this. Having a creative job like writing makes me, in society-approved ways, think that I am not being productive enough. And since I am doing something of my own instead of going on the already laid path by society, I feel like I have to do more and be more. It is when I am at the last bar of my battery that I realise I need a break, and then it takes me longer to recover. Taking breaks on a daily, weekly and monthly basis makes sure that you can go for your writing dreams in a sustainable and healthy way.
Daydream. One night in May, I was lying in bed, waiting for sleep to grace me with its presence. And while I was waiting, I was thinking about a story idea of mine that I am currently working on. Actually thinking is not the right word; I was seeing what it was showing me and following to the next obvious scene. This process for me happens semi-consciously, so when an incredible scene idea presented itself to me, my eyes were wide open, and my plans for sleeping went out the window. I got so excited that I jumped off my bed and grabbed my journal - noting what I saw before I forgot it. Even though I couldn't immediately work on the story idea, I was in that high for the next three. If you are feeling stuck in your writing, take a break from everything and spend some time daydreaming about what happens next in your writing project or journey. Let that inspiration and excitement spark your writing engine.
Write for yourself. Even if you don't do anything of the above mentioned suggestions, make sure to commit to this one. When we started on this writing journey, we wrote for ourselves. Or an even better explanation, we wrote for ourselves because of how it made us feel. Happy, understood, therapeutic, excited, less lonely. We need always be writing from and for these feelings. But then, in order to make our place in the world, we start writing for others. And in doing so, we lose ourselves. Bring your love for your writing back to yourself by writing for yourself again. You are your writing's first reader; make sure they have a fun time first. And you'll never be stuck or stagnant again.
My book for writers, Soul Writer vs. Social Writer, is out now!
Great advice, Rubina.