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A few people have asked me recently how I stay motivated when writing. And I get it. It's hard. As writers we have to put in so much work, never knowing whether it will pay off.
With this in mind, here are 5 of my top tips on how to keep motivated and finish that book!
1. Write what you want to write!
My first tip is to write what you want to write! It's hard to finish a project if you're not actually enjoying it!
I think we have notions sometimes of what we should be doing. But they don't necessarily align with what we want to be doing.
For the longest time I thought that I should be writing something incredibly high brow that all my friends would be impressed by. I thought I should want to be winning awards and hitting prestigious author lists, and be critically acclaimed etc. You know what though? That's just not me! It's not actually what I want! The first book I ever wrote – with this notion in mind -was such a slog. I hated writing it. And it was terrible. Same with the next.
So what am I saying here? Never be embarrassed about your passion, your weirdness, or what brings you joy. These are all strengths. Embrace who you are and what you want and don't hold back. Your dreams are yours. Own them!
Somehow, I've built a foundation of a writing career by posting weekly content about cupids on the Internet! That's so weird! I used to feel kind of embarrassed to tell the people I knew in real life about it because it didn't seem like the kind of thing I should be doing.
But you know what? Cupid's Match was the first project I wrote for the joy of it. It was the first project I decided to do my way instead of the way I thought I should be doing it. It was the fastest I'd ever finished writing a book before. And it was the first project that I really had a lot of fun working on!
I don't think that it's a coincidence that out of all the projects I'd worked on, that was the one that gained traction and eventually became my debut. I wrote it because I wanted to write it. And I think that readers could feel the joy that it was giving me as they read along.
So tip 1 - write what you want to write!
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