How to Find Hope for Completing Your Writing Goals

ALT

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Campfire, a 2023 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a writing and worldbuilding platform to help you create an immersive experience benefitting both authors and readers. Today, Campfire Community Manager Emory Glass shares some words on having hope when writing feels overwhelming:

It has been 3,265 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I was 16 and wrote 75,000 words. It was exhilarating and cathartic and everything I ever dreamt of.

Tomorrow it will be 3,266 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I look back on my projects thinking, “2,500 words a day is lightspeed. The words flowed so freely then, so quickly.” I want to be a writer–I am a writer. It is my identity, my purpose, my reason, yet I cannot bring myself to finish what I have begun.

The next day it will have been 3,267 days since I won NaNoWriMo. The words do not fly from my fingertips but crawl, sapped of energy, the page a grave for ink stains posing as letters. I talk to my characters often. My writer friends tell me I speak of them as if they were real people, but I cannot seem to lift the weight of their stories from my mind. Still, I have no platform, no audience, no one eagerly watching for the next installment.

The day after it will have been 3,268 days since I won NaNoWriMo. Two publications, no published novels, hundreds of thousands of words gathering dust. I am no writer, I am a collector of words. There must be something wrong with me. I have so much to tell, so much to share, so much to create, but here I am not telling, not sharing, not creating.

One day it will have been 3,269 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I will not have published a book, I will not have a new story, I will not have an audience or a platform or one–just one–person looking forward to what happens next.

But I will not give up.

“…and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

It’s rather typical for a dark fantasy writer to peer into the void, but it quickly becomes an intoxication and an excuse to never move a muscle. Do not succumb. Push forward, even if you barely move an inch. If you wish to be a builder, you build. If you wish to be a fighter, you fight. If you wish to be a writer, you write.

Brute force seems barbaric. Should words not spill onto the page? It is said that art cannot be coerced or bent to one’s own will; it comes easily, naturally, swiftly. The very best art is created in a creative frenzy, so they say, and the very best artists are recognized in memoriam.

But if you delay and evade and wither your ambition as you count the days since your last success, your oeuvre halts and is buried and perishes by your own hand. So if you, like me, too often find yourself peering into the void where the words have gone to fade away, cleave to the remedy for its gaze: hope. This is the heart of creation. Laudation and lucrativeness are but two measures of success. They will not themselves burst a dam of words within you and imbue every project with Midas’ touch. Creative fever is not catching–you must seek it out.

Give yourself a reason to write even when you do not want to or it feels too Herculean a task. If you seek new horizons, a useful tool, or a supportive community to accompany you on this odyssey, enlist Campfire to help. Whether it behooves you to squeeze out words on your mobile device, stay focused offline with a desktop application, or keep inspiration at hand via browser-based work and Discord chats, it’s the best place to bring your stories to life.

NaNoWriMo participants can save on Campfire’s writing software! Use the discount code LETSGONANO23 for 30% off your first year of an annual subscription to our Standard Plan. It’s free to create an account. Offer expires March 31, 2024.

ALT

Emory Glass is an avid artist, worldbuilder, and author with a passion for strong female characters in leading roles and meticulous attention to detail in lore. She loves tea, learning Scottish Gaelic, continuing her work on The Chroma Books, a series of interconnected stories, and running Inkblood Book Company for similarly enthusiastic dark fantasy writers. When not chasing down stories, Emory works as the Community Manager at Campfire.

Top photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.