4 Tips to Help You Recapture Your Writing Joy

All through National Novel Writing Month, published authors will take the whistle, take over our official Twitter account for a week, and act as your NaNo Coach. This week’s NaNo Coach, Katie Bayerl, has some advice to help you capture the joy of writing again:

Remember joy?

Remember that buzzy new story feeling of a few weeks ago? It’s ok if it’s faded—that happens. Heidi and Nita offered great tips for tending your flame, and I’m going to add a few more because, well, it’s been a tough couple of weeks and writing can sap us. But Writing-While-Blah? Not a great feeling and not so great for our stories either.

We write because we want to feel something, because we know what it’s like to read something that moves us. So how do we recapture that joy when it’s slipped away? Here are some ideas:

1. Cling to art. 

Find an image that captures your story. Tape it above your computer, or create a whole Pinterest board. Make a playlist while you’re at it, or find that one song that expresses your protagonist’s longing and listen to it over and over until you feel it in your skin.

2. Eat dessert first. 

Can you taste the ending already? Is there an action (or kissing!) scene you’ve been tingling to write? Go there. Right now. Sometimes we need to throw order to the curb and go with the scene that beckons. Often, we find new energy there and insights into the scenes that come before. [Concept stolen from this prolific guy.]

3. Allow yourself to play. 

Think it’s too late to try something new? Think again. What if you wrote that next scene in a different point of view, a different tense, or some other form (poem, letter, or… game show script)? You might have to go back and change it later… or you might unlock something amazing. After all, you know far more about your story than you did three weeks ago. So let your inner child out and see what they discover.

4. LET GO for goodness sake! 

It’s the final lap. Get your foot off the brake, forget about punctuation, drop in an XX when you can’t find the right word. There’s no time to worry about all that. Set a timer, turn your font to white or—gasp!—pull out a pen and let your motherlovin’ fingers fly. Maybe your prose turns purple. Maybe it goes scattered and thin. Who cares? Now is the moment to blast out everything you’ve got left in your heart.

Your joy is right here, Wrimos. It’s waiting for you to grab it.

Katie Bayerl the author of the forthcoming YA mystery A Psalm for Lost Girls. When she isn’t penning her own stories, she coaches teens and nonprofits to tell theirs. She has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Obsessions include saints, bittersweet ballads, and murder.